


Stowaway

by TheNot



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Exploring Gender, Genderfluid Character, Genderfluid Keith, Implied Transphobia, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Pidge | Katie Holt, Underage Drinking, kind of, look i'm just kind of writing and rolling with it, questioning gender, roommate au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-07 19:54:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8814178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNot/pseuds/TheNot
Summary: When Lance finds a handsome stranger hiding in the backseat of his Jeep on the way to Pidge's birthday party, he can't help but wonder what his story is. Luckily for him, after he drops him off at his destination, he quickly gets revisited. Lance is a bi college student who lets Keith, a dfab genderfluid 21 year-old, stay at his apartment after Keith runs away from home.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I had two finals when I started writing this but now I can’t stop
> 
> I’m genderfluid and I’m All About genderfluid!Keith so spoilers Keith is genderfluid in this. Basically I just want to explore what exploring genderfluidity and being into people is like and also I’m a hardcore Klance shipper. Pls let me know if you like it and would like to see me continue this and i hope u enjoy friends

Lance swore and kicked the gas pump again, hoping beyond hope the slow tick of the machine would end soon. He was still an hour away from Albuquerque and Pidge’s birthday would start in – he checked his phone for the third time – five minutes ago.

“Shit!” he hissed, glaring as the meter kept ticking up. If he was late, not only would Pidge totally kill him, but the ice cream cake he had just picked up would completely melt in this heat before anyone got to eat it. Meaning Hunk would totally kill him too.

As he groaned at the thought of where his two best friends might hide his body, he heard the telltale _thunk_ of the machine stopping and nearly dropped his wallet trying to yank his credit card out. As he was paying, he heard a noise like a door opening behind him, but figured it was just someone entering the convenience store or the auto body shop next to the gas pumps.

Hurriedly shoving his credit card and receipt into his already over-flowing wallet of useless papers and coupons, he hooked the gas pump back up and scurried into the front seat, skidding out like he was in a Fast and Furious movie.

As he spent more time on the highway, Lance allowed himself to shift back into his carefree self, now sure that with the low traffic, he should definitely be able to get to Pidge’s in no time. They were the only one of their friend group that was still in high school (they had taken some upper levels classes, allowing the squad to meet in the first place), so driving there from Santa Fe took a while. Honestly, he probably should have gotten the cake somewhere a bit closer.

Feeling a little claustrophobic after being alone in his dad’s old Jeep for too long, Lance started fiddling with the radio, searching for some kind of lame pop station he could distract himself with. Settling on a particularly dramatic, yet campy, Taylor Swift song, he chuckled and sang along, feeling somewhat glad for the loneliness since no one could criticize his music taste or his singing (as was usual for his past group road trips).

That is, he felt glad until he belted a particularly screechy high note and heard a faint _“what the fuck”_ from somewhere behind him.

Immediately his singing morphed into a shrill scream and Lance pulled over to the shoulder of the road and looked behind him into the backseat.

Nothing but the ice cream cake.

Which was open.

“What the hell…” Lance thought for sure he had shut the cake to keep the warm air out as much as possible when he loaded it back there. Maybe the voice was his subconscious questioning his music choices? As he reached back to shut the cake box, he froze as a fingerless-gloved hand shot out to shut it first.

“WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!” he screamed, leaping back against the wheel and honking the horn with his elbow. He scrambled out of the driver’s side door and pulled open the door right behind, finding some punk-ass, but fairly attractive, kid hiding directly behind his seat. “WHAT THE FUCK! WHAT THE FUCK!”

“Sorry, I probably should have closed that back up,” came a dull voice. “I was a little hungry and I wasn’t sure how long you’d be driving for.”

Lance could only just stand on the side of the road and scoff confusedly at the figure that was now climbing out of his car. The kid (who looked to be his same age, around 20, which Lance honestly still considered kid-hood) was wearing a large red sweatshirt that enveloped their frame in mystery down to their seriously curvy thighs, which were covered in black skinny jeans. Their eyes were dark and hooded with lack of sleep, but his posture seemed to indicate nervous energy ready for action. The kid looked Asian, maybe Korean, but Lance wasn’t too keen on his ability to distinguish different countries of origin that well. However, none of this mattered because:

“You have fucking mullet.”

The kid blinked up at him, showing the first signs of emotion since the interaction began. “What?”

“You were hiding in my fucking car, trying to kill me, and for some reason, you have a mullet!”

“I wasn’t-“ the kid shook their head. “Wait, you think I was trying to kill you and you’re mad because I have a mullet?”

“Of course I am! Well, that and the fact that you were obviously trying to eat some of the ice cream cake I bought with my hard-earned money for a friend in dire need of some sugar and fun!” Lance knew he should probably be more concerned with the actual car-trespassing that took place, but it was the best he could think of at the time to give him a chance to process what was happening.

“Look man, I’m sorry for sneaking into your car at the gas station, I’ll go now,” the kid looked a little concerned at Lance’s outbursts, putting their hands up as if to keep him away, and steadily moved backwards away from the car.

“Nuh-uh, nope! I’m calling the police. You’re a creepy motherfucker who tried to assault me and steal my cake, I’m having none of this,” Lance said, taking out his phone. In a panic, the kid snatched it away. “Hey!”

“You can’t do that.”

“And why the hell not?!”

“If the police come…”

“Yea?”

“They’ll just take me back to my parents.”

Lance paused, just staring back at the kid. “Dude, you look like….21.”

“Okay? So what if I am?”

“ _So,_ I don’t think the police would make you go back home to your parents if you didn’t want to! They’d drop you at your apartment or some shit, I don’t know!” Lance shrugged impatiently and lunged for his phone, causing the kid to yank his arm behind his back faster than he expected. “Look, I don’t really care what sort of shit you’re going through with your family, and I need to hit the road or my friends will seriously end my life.”

“You promise not to call the cops?”

“Fuck, sure, yes, whatever!” Lance gestured for the phone.

The kid examined him for a moment then tentatively asked, “Are you going to Albuquerque?”

“What?” Lance was taken aback, but wanted to stay cautious around this car-invader. “No, I’m going to….Santa Fe,” he claimed, smug that his quick wit chose a lie that was close enough to pass.

The kid looked incredulous. “That’s where we came from, dumbass. Plus, your GPS was set to Albuquerque.”

Lance fidgeted angrily, realizing that this kid must be a mastermind deductionist or something. Cute, fast, and smart. Fuck. Lance couldn’t even keep himself from finding weird stowaways attractive. “Okay, okay! Fine, yes, I’m going to Albuquerque. What, you want a ride?”

The question was meant to be obviously rhetorical, but the kid actually looked eager, leaning in for a, “yes.”

“Wha- no! No fucking way! You don’t get to ask for a ride after hiding like a fucking fugitive, nope!” Lance took the opportunity of the kid’s hopefulness to grab his phone back and jump back into the Jeep as quick as he could.

The kid was faster, shoving a combat boot in to keep the door from closing. “Please. I need to get away.”

Lance finally looked at the kids’ eyes, which betrayed varying degrees of fear and desperation. “Get away from who?”

The kid just grimaced and looked away, not answering.

“If you don’t tell me, you’re S.O.L. What is it? Your parents?”

They looked back up, staring at Lance with shining, black eyes, and confirmed with another agonizing, “please.”

Lance sighed and unlocked the door, prompting the kid to run around to the passenger side and climb in. One of these days the horrific combination of his dick and his heart was going to kill him, but he hoped today wasn’t that day.

\----------

After twenty minutes of driving, all Lance had gotten out of the kid was that his name was “Keith” and he was not super into his parents, which had already been well-established. After his fifth failed attempt at conversation, Lance glanced over, seeing Keith still leaning his wrist on the windowsill and staring out the window, hair flowing in the wind.

Lance did his best to ignore how gorgeous he looked.

“Y’know,” eyes back to the road, “I almost didn’t notice you were a guy when you got out of the car.”

Suddenly, Lance could feel tension flare up in Keith as he turned sharply in his seat to look at Lance, giving much more reaction than the “hmm”’s he was getting before. “Really?”

“Uh, yea,” Lance blinked, swallowing, and trying to remain focused on the road while thinking of a reasonable source of evidence. “You just have some, uh, curvy hips, that’s all.”

“I’m aware,” Keith practically growled. Lance chided himself, realizing that no dude was probably looking for someone to call them “curvy”, and after a (minor) consideration, thought it best to go back and try to explain what he meant.

“I mean, it’s fine for dudes to look like girls sometimes! You know, like gay.” He was really fucking this up.

“Are you saying all gay guys look like women?”

“What? No! I mean, it really sounded like that’s what I said, I guess, but…” Lance trailed off and shrugged. "I don’t know! I’m bi, so maybe I’m not gay enough to be talking about this. Sorry. Just ignore me!”

“….So were you just saying that I look like a woman?” Keith sounded calm but there was an obvious strain under his voice.

“Oh my god, no, it’s like- I’m just saying that…” Lance wasn’t sure what he was trying to say. “You’re just pretty, okay?” He blushed, realizing that his attempt to get conversation out of Keith had failed dreadfully with his ridiculous asshole-ish comments.

“Oh,” Keith uttered, as if the comment meant nothing at all, and reconfigured himself in his seat to look out the window.

Fantastic. Time for forty minutes of more silence. Lance wasn’t sure why he was even trying given the lack of Keith’s conversational skills and his own awkward flirty nonsense, but he was seriously starting to get concerned about who this kid was. Why was he at a roadside gas station anyway? Why was he eating the cake? Was he like, starving on the street or something? Figuring any more pushing would result in further miscommunication, he bit his lip to stay quiet and kept on driving.

\----------

When they finally took the exit that led to Pidge’s house and Keith still hadn’t spoken up about his destination, Lance dared to break the silence again.

“Is there anywhere in particular you want me to drop you? A friend’s house? A bus station?”

For a second, Lance wondered if Keith had even heard him, but after glancing over he saw that he was deep in thought, now facing forward.

“Well, where are you going?” he asked, tilting his face towards Lance.

“Uh,” Lance found it difficult to keep his eyes on the road and not stare incredulously at his doll-like face. “ _I’m_ going to a birthday party. Where are _you_ going?”

Ignoring the question, Keith added, “Could I just get out where you stop?”

“Why would you want to do that? They live in like, the suburbs. You wouldn’t be able to get anywhere.”

“I don’t care, it doesn’t really matter to me.”

“Okay, that’s it.” Lance pulled over to the side of the road and leaned towards Keith aggressively. “Look, dude, do you even have a plan? Any kind of plan? At all?”

Keith looked uncomfortable under the sudden attention, his cool exterior cracking slightly with embarrassment. “Of course I do.”

“Really, man? Because it seems like you don’t!” Keith only glared in reply. “Did you just suddenly decide to run away from home and climbed into the first car you saw at the gas station?”

“What if I did?” Keith’s mouth was a straight line as he stared him down.

Lance wasn’t really sure what to say to that. Of course, no one would plan to hide in someone’s car if all they wanted to do was hitchhike. Now that he thought about it, Keith could have been in danger or had something really bad happen to him and he didn’t even know it.

“Fine, whatever,” Lance grumbled, trying not to betray his now overwhelming concern for this beautiful man across from him. “I’ll drop you a few roads away from my friend’s – I’m not letting you creep on them too.”

Lance sensed a huge amount of relief covered up quickly once more by Keith’s aloof attitude. “Thank you.”

\----------

When the time came, Lance still felt concerned. He drove past the road at which he intended to drop Keith, then the next one, then the next one. Once he got to the intersection down the street from Pidge’s house, he realized he had to stop or else he really would be showing this stranger his friend’s exact address.

As he slowly stopped at a stop sign, he signaled Keith (who appeared to be dozing) with a _click,_ unlocking the doors. Keith quickly became alert and opened the door, apparently ready to jump out without another word.

“Hey!” Lance called out, willing him to stop. Keith turned to look at him. “I hope you get…wherever you’re going.”

Keith blinked and smiled for the first time since Lance had seen him. It was faint, stretching his chapped lips just a tad bit upwards. “Thanks.” He shut the door and headed in the opposite direction.

Lance really wanted to stay and talk to the kid a bit more, but he was certain the ice cream cake was utterly demolished in the back seat and Pidge would seriously never forgive him if he didn’t get there soon. Mentally crossing his fingers that Keith would end up alright again, he drove the short few minutes down the street and parked in Pidge’s driveway.

The moment he pulled in, he saw the porchlights come on and a sufficiently angry Pidge and apologetic Hunk came barreling out of the house. Lance laughed, happy to see his friends just as he remembered them after his emotional ordeal on the road.

\----------

For some reason, Lance didn’t mention the strange kid he picked up to Pidge and Hunk. Given his reputation as a massive flirt, they probably would have made some joke about him picking up babes on the side of the road, and it felt wrong talking about Keith that way, since he still wasn’t sure what that kid’s deal was.

After a bit of a pummeling from Pidge, the three of them went inside and joined Pidge’s brother Matt, his friend Shiro, and Shiro’s girlfriend Allura to enjoy the melted remains of the cake and the cold pizza the five had ordered (and nearly finished) an hour ago.

Given how late it was already, Lance and Hunk stayed over once the party was over, and Shiro and Allura headed back to their apartment near the research institute they worked at. After all the adventures Lance had spent in the beating sun (and maybe some of the booze he had at the party) Lance felt himself slip into slumber quickly on the Holt family’s couch, picturing dark eyes framed by long, silky lashes.

The next morning, Hunk, being an unfortunately early riser, left with loud goodbyes and suffocating hugs that forced Lance to wake up sooner than he wanted but later than he should have. After some quick brunch from Pidge’s endearing parents and coffee to-go, Lance prepared himself for the long journey back home.

Stepping out of the house, he fumbled in his pocket for his keys and noticed it was empty. Now that he thought about it, he realized he never brought in his keys and probably left them in the car. After yanking on the handle to find it locked, he leaned up against the driver’s side window to see if he had indeed left them on the seat – but they were nowhere to be seen.

“Looking for these?” sounded a familiar voice behind him.

Spinning around, he saw Keith, smirking slightly while holding out a set of Jeep keys. “I’d like to request another ride.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW I am actually so surprised at the amount of people who commented and kudos'd (ed? did a kudos? idk man) so thank u so much to those that did!!!! it really did encourage me lmao
> 
> hope y'all enjoy this next chapter

As Lance glanced over at the now much more relaxed-looking Keith sitting next to him, he stifled a sigh. How did this happen? More importantly, how did this happen _again_?

He still didn’t 100% believe that Keith had picked up his keys with the intent to protect his car from getting stolen, but there was no way to prove it. Most likely Keith wanted some leverage to convince him to drive him back to Santa Fe, and both were somewhat surprised when Lance calmly agreed to it.

Now here they were, in complete silence once again. Lance wanted to ask – where did you sleep at night? Do you still not have a plan? Do you need a hug? But he figured none of these questions would get past Keith’s stalwart deflection skills. Lance thought they were doomed to a repeat of their previous boring trip until he heard a low grumble signaling a hungry stomach to his right.

“How about we stop at the next exit and grab a bite to eat? I’ll buy.” Lance asked innocently, hoping this kid didn’t have so much pride that he would refuse a free meal.

Keith considered the offer for a few seconds, but as they passed another sign highlighting about seven different fast food places, he acquiesced. “Sounds fine,” he said, biting the inside of his lip and forming a pout. Lance did his best to ignore how fucking cute it was as he navigated towards the highway exit.

\----------

The two sat across from each other at a McDonald’s, a set of 20 nuggets and a large fries between them. Despite Lance’s recent brunch, he couldn’t deny the smell of the nuggets and dug in, while Keith seemed to eat slowly, as if cherishing the manufactured meaty taste.

Lance realized that he had never seen Keith’s face straight-on for an extended period of time when they weren’t arguing over something. His skin was relatively pale except for a slight pink sunburn on his right cheek from sitting in the sun on the passenger side and a few freckles on his nose and arms. Keith’s lips were full and surrounded by smooth skin, which left Lance wondering how he avoided the awkward fuzzy beard hairs from not shaving in the past twelve hours. His eyes seemed tired, a little bloodshot, a little more hooded, and – they looked straight at him, noticing his overt staring.

“What?” Keith asked, voice disinterested.

“Nothing!” Lance heard his voice go unnaturally high, so he coughed and lowered it intentionally. “Nothing.” Damn it, he sounded like a fucking cartoon. In response, Keith just scrunched his face slightly in confusion and kept eating.

Lance wanted to punch himself. The whole point of getting this kid food was finding a way to get more information out of him, and they only had a few nuggets to go before they had to hit the road again. Was he supposed to take him home? Or maybe just drop him off on the side of the road? He needed to force this cagey emo kid into spilling what was going on.

Lance did the only thing he could think of and snatched the food away from Keith just as he was reaching for it.

“Hey!”

“No more nugs until I get some answers,” Lance growled, channeling a Jason-Bourne-level interrogation voice.

“Stop fucking calling them that, you sound like a twelve year-old,” Keith retorted, ignoring him and reaching for fries, which Lance snatched up as well. “What the fuck, man?”

“Look, I’m driving you around, I’m buying you food, the least you can do is explain to me what the hell is going on!” Lance wanted to sound menacing but he ended up sounding more like a whining child.

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Keith said in a quiet voice. “If you’ve got a problem driving me around, then…“ He glanced around, seemingly unsure of what that would mean, then settled his attention back on Lance. “I can just hitchhike with someone else. It’s not that huge of a deal.”

“But I-“

“No, it’s fine.” Keith interrupted him and stood up from the booth. “Thanks for everything, but I’ve obviously worn out my welcome.” He turned and Lance reached out for a last ditch effort to grab his wrist and stop him.

Instead, he felt Keith’s soft, yet strong fingers as he accidentally grabbed his hand instead.

“No, it’s not fine!” Lance shouted, to the alarm of the morning McDonald’s staffers. “Where are you going to go? Do you have any money? Do you even have a damn phone charger?”

“Look, I don’t fucking know, okay?” Keith practically roared back, shocking Lance into silence. Keith’s teeth were bared and he finally betrayed some form of raw emotion – anger and a hint of fear, but still. “I don’t know, but it’s not your problem, so please just,” he sighed, “stop.”

Keith stopped pulling on Lance’s hand, his strength faltering, but Lance tightened his grip anyway. After a beat of silence with neither of them moving, Lance whispered, “you could stay with me for a while.”

“I could what?”

“I said, you could stay with me. For a while. If you want,” he said louder, willing away a rising blush.

Keith, dumbfounded, just stared back. Lance was about to repeat himself again when he murmured, “You don’t even know anything about me.”

“Only because you still haven’t answered any of my questions!” snapped Lance. The seriousness of the atmosphere was starting to get to him. Keith turned back to him fully and Lance self-consciously realized he was still holding his hand and dropped it.

“So you really want to know?”

“For God’s sake, yes! Now sit your ass down and let’s finish these nugs.”

“Say that word one more time and I’m gone,” Keith said, easing back into the booth, looking pissed but less guarded. “Okay, fine. I’ll explain what happened.”

Lance set the nuggets and fries back between them and leaned forward on his elbows, eager to get the story. When Keith finally started, he spoke surprisingly quickly.

“My parents- well, my adoptive parents - and I have been having trouble getting along. They’re very conservative and many of my…beliefs are different from theirs. Usually I try not to rock the boat too much – I used to be a foster kid, so I’ve learned to be careful around parents – but recently things have gotten way worse.

“A couple of weeks ago my mom came in to do some laundry and found a binder of mine on the ground. I was able to pass it off as a tank top, but I think that’s what started some of their suspicions. It was just little things like that that sorta just kept building up. And then,” Keith paused to look down at his hands, fiddling with a burnt fry. “Then they visited me at my work – that auto body shop you got your gas at. I would bring my bike there to get serviced and they offered me a job a few months ago since they thought I was capable and I knew my way around an engine.

“So when I started working there, I got the bright idea,” he laughed breathlessly, as if he couldn’t believe it, “to try out the name Keith. The owners seemed chill enough and were fine with telling people my name was Keith instead of what went on the paperwork, and it worked out really well. I really like working on bikes and cars – it keeps my mind busy – and it was a chance for me to explore my gender a little.” He smiles, looking far-off and inadvertently making Lance’s heart thud a little harder.

“But you said your…parents visited you at work?” Lance prompted.

Keith looked back up at Lance, frowned, and continued, “Yea. They knew I was working at an auto body shop and their shitty minivan needed some serious help, so I guess they got the bright idea to come visit. Without telling me first.” He grimaced. “And of course they asked for me with my real name – er, I guess people call it a dead name. It’s not like I hate it or anything, but y’know. A girl’s name.”

Lance nodded, recalling when Pidge came out as non-binary wanted to change their name from Katie. They said they didn’t have anything particularly against the name, just that “Pidge” felt better. More preferable.

“So, basically, when the confusion was settled, my work had accidentally outed me to my parents and my parents had outed me to my work. It was a disaster.”

“Did you…get in trouble?”

“Well, it was just silent. For like, too long. I could see the gears turning in my parents’ heads and I just-“ he shrugged, “bolted into the first car I found.”

“My car.”

“Great deduction.”

“So…you don’t even know if your parents would be mad?” Lance was confused, but he knew he had some privilege keeping him from really getting it, given how lucky he was having a family who was okay with him coming out as bisexual.

“Well, I don’t assume they would be happy. But also, I’ve only lived with them since high school. They only adopted me because I wanted to apply to college and it looked better if it seemed like I had stayed with a family for a while.”

“Then why did you run?”

Keith laughed mirthlessly. “Like I said, I don’t fucking know.”

Lance shot him a lopsided smile, “You’re really a loose cannon, aren’t you?”

“I guess I am,” Keith sighed.

A few moments passed, now less tense since Keith’s speedy confession. Lance wondered whether Keith had even talked to someone this in-depth about his gender before, and considering the prospect that he might be the first made him feel honored.

“So you’re…”

“I’m what?”

“You’re,” Lance started gesturing vaguely. “You know.”

“I know what?” Keith’s brow furrowed and Lance had to stop himself from wanting to smooth them out with his thumb.

“Trans,” he whispered.

“That’s what you’re trying to ask me?” Keith scoffed.

“Well I don’t know if you want the whole staff of this McDonald’s to know!” hissed Lance, putting up a hand to block their conversation from any potential prying ears.

“I really doubt they care that much. Plus, I’m not trans.”

“Huh?” Lance internally chided himself for his audible dumbfounded-ness.

“Or at least, I don’t think so.” Keith crossed his arms and raised his shoulders. “I’ve been using the label ‘genderfluid’ because I don’t always feel like a dude but I guess that could change in the future.”

“Okay. I…think I get that.” Lance tapped the table absentmindedly and popped the last of the fries into his mouth. “So, you go by Keif and ‘he’ pronounth?”

“Ew, chew your fucking food, I don’t want to see that shit. But yes, ‘he-his’ is good.” Keith reached for the last nugget and Lance shot forward to slap his hand away. “Hey! What the fuck man?”

“No way are you getting the last nug!”

“I told you to stop calling them that! Also, I just bared my fucking soul to you, so I think I deserve it.” He reaches again.

“NO WAY!” shouts Lance, at full volume, grabbing the nugget and licking it all over. “Want it now?”

Keith looked utterly disgusted. “You’re fucking gross.”

“Thank you,” he said, reaching to dip it in the barbeque sauce. Anticipating his move, Keith took the honey mustard and quickly dumped it into the barbeque. “EW- WHAT THE FUCK, KEITH?! How am I supposed to eat this nug- …nugget now?”

Keith smirked, adding the ketchup as well for good measure, “Sorry, I thought your saliva was all the sauce you needed. My mistake.”

Lance began scoffing continuously, waving his hands to convey how scandalized he was and stood up from the booth. “That’s it! We’re leaving! I can’t handle this anymore!” Keith laughed and followed, gathering their trash. In the midst of his dramatics, Lance noted that Keith’s laughter sounded like wind chimes or something – far unlike his own horse-ish laugh.

As they got back to the car, Keith turned towards Lance as they were about to separate for their different sides of the car. “Hey,” he called, making Lance pause. “Are we…heading to your place? Was that a real offer?”

“Of course,” Lance said, smiling. “I wouldn’t say something like that unless I meant it.”

“Oh,” Keith replied, as if he hadn’t thought of that. “Thanks, Lance.”

Suddenly uncomfortable with the heartfelt appreciation, Lance scurried to the front of the car and hopped in. “Just come on! I need some daylight to work on a paper due at midnight that I haven’t even started.” Keith chuckled again and got in the passenger side.

Lance wasn’t exactly sure what the plan was going forward, but he was happy that he was there to help Keith figure it out.

\----------

Later, on the road:

“Oh, fuck!”

“Jesus, what’s your problem? Do I need to take control of the wheel?”

“I called you curvy! I thought you were a girl! And I didn’t even know!”

“Dude it’s fine, trust me-“

“I’M SUCH A BAD ALLY. And now here I am, making it about me!”

“You said it, not me.”

“Uggh, I’m turning into white cis-het scum.”

“Okay, you’re only like one of those things.”

“Let me feel guilty about this, Keith!”

“Fine, you can burn in hell for all I care, but keep your eyes on the road or I’m fucking barrel-rolling out of here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally I made it McDonald’s bc I thought Dirty Laundry was Burger King (it wasn’t), but I’ve actually read lots of klance fics that have them end up at a McDonald’s along the way, so maybe it’s fitting.
> 
> Again, let me know if you like this and if you want to see more!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks again for all the comments!!! I'm so glad the trans/nb/genderfluid stuff resonates with people because I was worried my own genderfluid experiences wouldn't translate that well (again, I'm glad they do!!). y'all keep me goin.

By the time they had climbed the four stories to Lance’s apartment, Lance was out of breath. “Sorry about the stairs,” he panted, fumbling with his keys.

Keith, on the other hand, seemed unaffected. “It’s fine – I’m pretty in shape.”

Wishing he could glare out of the back of his head, Lance finally got the right key into the lock and opened the door.

“Oh, wow,” Keith uttered behind him. Lance wasn’t really sure what he was referring to, but he really hoped it wasn’t the mess. There were still some pizza boxes and lingering burrito bowls left around from the last time Hunk was over to play brawl. Which was…a week ago. Sufficiently gross.

“Yea, it’s kind of a trash heap, but I’ll go around and clean it up in a second!” Lance dumped his keys and wallet on the counter by the door and slipped off his shoes.

“No, that’s not what I meant,” Keith said, shaking his head slightly, still looking completely in awe. “I’m wondering why you have so much…stuff.” He fiddled with some blue Christmas lights adorning the entering hallway, entranced. The blue glow made his face look ethereal.

Lance looked around, partly to consider his living space and partly to force his eyes off Keith. He wasn’t sure what constituted “so much stuff”, but he supposed his small living room with a futon, a recliner, multiple Ikea tables, a television, his guitar, and a ridiculous amount of knick-knacks, photos, and decorations could seem a little eccentric to an outsider.

“Oh, yea,” he started, gesturing towards the living room. “I’m the first one in my family to go to college, so my parents, their parents, their siblings…they kinda went ham on the housewarming gifts. Also, I shared an apartment with my friend Hunk for the past two years so the amount of furniture made more sense then, I guess.”

“You have a friend named Hunk?” Keith’s face was somewhere between a grin and a smirk as he bent down to untie his combat boots and leave them next to Lance’s sneakers.

“Why do people always find that so weird? He’s pretty hunk-ish if I do say so myself…” Lance grabbed a trash bag and started dumping old boxes and beer bottles into it hastily. “Anyway, make yourself at home! You can have the futon tonight.”

Keith continued wandering in, gazing around at every inch of Lance’s living room. It made Lance feel a little uncomfortable having his space examined so meticulously.

After returning from dumping the trash down the chute in the hallway, Lance found Keith looking in the closet containing his laundry machines.

“You even have in-apartment laundry?” Keith asked, still somewhat incredulous.

“Okay, I promise you I’m not secretly rich or something. This apartment’s pretty tiny and I do live on the top floor with no elevator.”

“Of only four floors.”

“Only?!” Lance gasped, recalling the burn of his calves from his daily hikes upstairs.

Keith ignored him, obviously learning the skill from all their previous interactions. “Is it alright if I do some laundry? I’ve been in these clothes for almost twenty-four hours now.”

“Go for it, man,” Lance said, striding towards the TV remote and flipping something on. It wouldn’t be the _end_ of the world if he procrastinated on his paper a little while longer. “If you need help with any of the settings-“ he looked back and stopped, shocked to see Keith already partially undressed, shoving his sweatshirt into the washing machine. His black binder made him look like some kind of karate star and Lance tried to ignore the swell of his biceps that had been previously hidden by his bulky sleeves.

“What’d you say?” Keith called over, starting to unbutton his pants.

“U-uhm….” Lance clenched his fists and focused on the space above Keith’s head. “J-just let me know if you need anything.”

“Actually, could I use your shower and borrow some clothes while mine go through the wash?” He threw the black skinny jeans in as well. Luckily for Lance, he was wearing boxers that weren’t super form fitting.

“Yes, of course, got it!” he replied, making a beeline for his bedroom and grabbing the first clothes resembling an outfit he could. “I’ll leave these in the bathroom for you!”

“Thanks!” Lance busied himself gathering what he needed to write his paper and brought it into his bedroom, the urge to procrastinate suddenly vanishing. He shut the door and left a slight crack so that he could easily burst through it if Keith somehow fell in the shower or something.

Pretending he wasn’t blushing, Lance called out, “I’ll be working on my paper while you’re in there!”

“Oh, okay,” Keith replied. Lance could see him through the cracked door, wrapped in a towel that came up to his chest. Setting his laptop aside, Lance buried his face in a pillow and groaned. He really shouldn’t be letting his thoughts wander regarding Keith – they were still practically strangers and it felt weird fantasizing about a dude that probably felt really indebted to him at this point. Plus, Keith was probably too busy sorting out his own shit with his family to take on the added burden of Lance’s attempts at romance.

Setting down the pillow and opening his notebooks and laptop around him, Lance decided to bury his burgeoning feelings and focus on his paper. He could always worry about it later and Keith probably wouldn’t want to stay at his apartment forever anyway. As he heard the shower water cut on from the bathroom, he found himself disappointed at that thought.

\----------

After only a single paragraph in thirty minutes, Lance lay back on his bed, too bored to continue. Keith was still in the shower, and as soon as he started getting concerned that maybe Keith had fallen and broken a hip, he heard the water cut off. A few minutes later, Keith opened the door, hair up in a towel, wearing Lance’s clothes, and back to his classic crossed-arms pose. “You know, it’s really hard to keep your hair and face clean when all you have to work with is a 3-in-1 body wash that smells like axe.”

“Hey! The ladies love it!” Lance knew this was a lie but too many people had criticized him for it for him to turn back now.

Keith rolled his eyes. “Oh sorry, I should have known from all the ladies you have lying around your apartment.”

“Excuse you, I have plenty of game!”

“Lance, the boxers you gave me have your name in them. No man who regularly has sex has their name in their underwear.”

“How would you know?” Lance couldn’t deny that he wasn’t exactly the most experienced guy around, but he figured Keith couldn’t be much better, given his austerity and all-around social inhibition.

“I’ve had sex with plenty of men. And I’ve seen their underwear. _Nameless_.” Keith removed the towel from his hair and hung it back up in the bathroom.

Lance wasn’t sure whether to be angry about how strong his comeback was or glad that he confirmed Keith liked men. He decided to just grimace and save his paper for the seventh time since actually writing anything.

“How’s your paper going?” Keith asked, leaning in the doorway.

“It’s fucking trash so far, but I’ve got at least one paragraph down!” Lance pumped his fists in the air to emphasize the accomplishment. “Only, like, twelve more to go.”

“Was it your introduction?”

Lance immediately brought his fists down. “Maybe. But still – progress!”

“What’s your paper about?” Keith called, now in the bathroom, trying to arrange his bangs into their rightful places.

“Some kind of war shit I don’t care about,” grumbled Lance, sliding down further on his bed until he was fully horizontal. “I pushed off my distribution requirements the past two years and now I’m stuck taking a bunch of English and history alongside my upper-level physics courses. Hunk always likes to remind me that he told me this would bite me in the ass but, at least I had a good two years of partying and acing intro physics classes.”

“You’re a physics major?”

“Yea, I want to go into astronomy one day. Why?”

“Oh, I,” Keith looked bashful for a moment, then continued, “when I was in college for like a semester, I was a physics major. Same reason.”

“What!” Lance shot up, nearly flinging his laptop but luckily catching it with one hand. “You like space too?”

“I guess so?” Keith seemed both surprised and nonchalant about the outburst, likely used to Lance at this point.

“Is it the adventure? The wonder of space exploration? The heroism?”

“Uh, no.” Lance wilted. “More like, understanding things bigger than us. Black holes. Dimensional travel. Aliens. That sort of thing.”

“Um, excuse me? Aliens?” Lance cast his laptop aside onto his bed, forgotten. “You can’t seriously be saying you believe in aliens.”

“Why not? It’s statistically very likely that there is life on other planets.”

“Well, yea, I know that, obviously!” He didn’t, but Keith sounded like he knew what he was talking about so he let it go. “Are you some kind of…” He crept closer to Keith, waving his hands around for effect. “X Files Star Trek nerd?”

Keith sighed, the conversation evidently draining him. “And what if I am?”

Lance gasped dramatically and hugged Keith close, laughing hysterically. “Keith! That’s so adorable! I can almost imagine you on some far-off planet studying alien feces or some shit! With like a lab coat and cute science goggles!”

“Unwanted touching!” Keith shouted, pushing Lance away half-heartedly and dusting himself off. “I’d prefer contact to a minimum, at least while my binder’s in the wash. Also, I really doubt humans will make it into space past Mars anytime within my lifetime.”

“Ah, sorry,” Lance blushed, instantly backing away. “Got a little carried away!” He fidgeted with his fingers and made his way back to his laptop. “So, uh, why aren’t you in college anymore?”

“I had some…discipline issues, I guess,” Keith said, shrugging and returning to his emo-arms-crossed-door-lean from before. “It was my first time completely on my own and I guess I was just so happy that I didn’t have to put on airs for foster parents anymore that I kinda fucked it up.”

“What happened?” Lance plopped onto his bed and pulled his legs up to sit crisscross.

“I just got in a lot of fights.”

“Over what?”

“Over nothing. Guys harassing girls going home from parties. Douchebags spiking drinks. Those sorts of things.”

Lance blinked. Keith basically revealed himself to be some kind of college campus superhero and he was claiming it to be ‘over nothing’. Wild.

“That’s behind me now, though. One day I’ll probably go back to school. The stars can’t keep me away forever, right?” Lance felt ready to sue him over his heart-stopping grin. “Hey, have you seen that one YouTube video about stars in the habitable zone?”

“No, I haven’t!” Lance was more into the adventure of space travel than the actual science, so he hadn’t nerded out over the more physics-based YouTube videos that much. He hoped his voice sounded as eager as Keith’s.

Keith laughed – oh _god_ why did it sound so magical – and continued, “Let me go switch my clothes to the dryer and show you. It’s actually pretty cool.”

And that was how they spent the next three hours, trying to one-up each other with what they thought were cool physics-y space videos (Lance’s being decidedly more fiction-based), with Lance on his bed and Keith in Lance’s desk chair. Lance half-wished they were sitting side-by-side on his bed, but he was honestly happy to just have someone else in his apartment, since living the single life had gotten pretty lonely recently.

Around dinnertime, Lance ordered food, inciting an argument over whether to get pizza (Lance’s preference for dark days when he had to mindlessly rush out a paper) and Chinese (Keith’s preference, which Lance believed he chose only to be argumentative). Eventually Keith conceded after being reminded that, once again, Lance was paying because Keith didn’t have any money on him.

After a few more hours of eating and goofing around online, Keith’s yawns started to pick up.

“Hey, why don’t you try going to bed? I doubt you slept much last night and I should probably get back to working on my paper,” Lance said, enjoying that he was, for maybe the first time in his life, the responsible one in a situation.

“What time is it?” asked Keith hazily, leaning towards Lance’s laptop to get a look at the time. “It’s only eight.”

“Giving you that much more sleep! Look, I’m getting out the blankets and pillows so now you can’t deny my effort to help. Go brush your teeth and get ready for bed.”

“Okay, mom,” retorted Keith, heading to the bathroom. As Lance was yanking an extra comforter from his closet, he heard a “shit!” from the bathroom.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, peeking around the corner.

“Nothing, I just-“ Keith huffed out a breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I forgot that I need to take my birth control soon or else my period’s going to start.”

Lance felt minorly proud of himself for not immediately blushing at the mention of periods. “If you need any pads or shit like that, I think my sister left some from when she visited a few weeks back. Check the cabinet.”

“Thank you,” the bathroom door slammed, but Lance figured it was less out of anger and more frustration. He continued setting up the futon in the living room for Keith to sleep.

A few minutes later, Keith came out, looking completely disheveled with sleepiness.

“Sorry I forgot,” Keith sighed and bit his lip. “I guess I probably need to swing by home and get my stuff if I’m really moving out. I don’t know if I can take my estrogen going all out of whack while trying to deal with this shit.” He plopped down on the futon and started re-arranging the blankets as he liked.

“That makes sense,” Lance replied, not really knowing the details of how birth control worked but understanding that wacky estrogen sounded like something a guy would want to avoid.

“Would you be alright with driving me there? Sometime tomorrow?” Keith seemed so unlike the version of himself that had taken his keys that morning. After spending so many hours together in one day, he probably felt that asking for help with something this personal was more appropriate than taking it by force.

“Yea, sure!” Lance replied, shooting him an “OK” sign with his hand. “I’ll come back from classes at around one and can pick you up from here if that works?”

“That sounds fine.” Keith situated himself under the covers and Lance was astounded at how small the mountains of blankets made him seem. “Thanks again, Lance. For everything.”

Every time Keith thanked him, Lance felt his responding blush even hotter than before. “I-it’s really no problem. I’m glad to help.” He went over to the light switch and looked back at Keith. “Hope you get some sleep – if you need anything, I’ll be up working on my paper.”

“Got it,” Keith said, smiling slightly. “Goodnight.”

Lance flipped the switch and did his best not to stumble on the way to his bedroom and shut the door. After taking a few deep breaths and cracking his knuckles, he sat back on his bed and decided to just power through the rest of his essay. He could easily be finished in one, two hours tops.

Images of Keith’s muscular arms, his shining eyes when watching the space videos, and his crossed-arm pose forcibly entered Lance’s mind the moment he hit enter to start a second paragraph. His resolve crumbling, Lance hung his head in his hands. This kid was going to be the death of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lance stop being so gay ok?  
> okay well if you liked this chapter, once again lemme know because I love hearing from you guys!!! and I could always use the encouragement lmao (rip me)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey hey hey guess who's back with more trash
> 
> also i know i'm a broken record but I LOVE ALL YOUR COMMENTS YOU GUYS ARE SO KIND! i will force my appreciation on you. feel appreciated.
> 
> anyway doot doo doo here we go

Lance was slowly awoken by a sound of faint counting. For a second he forgot that someone else was staying in his apartment, and he leapt off his bed, knocking several notebooks onto the carpet. As he got closer to his bedroom door, he recognized Keith’s voice and sighed with relief. Looking at the clock, he grimaced – 7:36AM.

Lance didn’t end up submitting his paper until around 1:20, and did so with a tacked-on apology to his professor for the slightly late e-mail. He didn’t remember brushing his teeth and he still wore his jeans, so he figured he must have passed out right afterwards. The few times he went into the kitchen to get water the last night, he saw Keith, completely cocooned in blankets, fast asleep with a slight scowl on his face.

Now Keith was obviously awake and causing enough ruckus to disturb Lance’s beauty rest.

“Keith!” Lance shouted, opening the door slightly and busting it down with his leg for dramatics. He looked around the living room and found Keith on the floor, doing push-ups in his now-clean boxers and a t-shirt Lance had given him.

“89…90…” Keith continued, oblivious due to blue earbuds that looked suspiciously like Lance’s.

Lance stormed over and ripped one of them out of his ear. “KEITH!”

“Hey! What the fuck?” Keith flipped around, and Lance could see that he hadn’t even been working up a sweat.

“Why are you doing push-ups in my apartment at seven-thirty in the morning?!” He heard the loud booming music coming from the ear bud dangling in his hand. “And is this Kanye?”

Keith stood up and stopped his music on his phone, huffing at the inconvenience. “Yea, so?”

“I just didn’t really peg you for a Kanye guy,” Lance smirked, imagining Keith trying to rap along to the lyrics.

“I’m not, really. It just gets me energized for when I want to work out.”

“Which brings me back to – why are you doing push-ups in my apartment at seven-thirty in the morning? Wasn’t the whole point of you going to bed early so that you could get rested?”

“I am rested. The sunrise woke me up, and I figured I’d pass the time getting some reps in,” Keith crossed his arms and Lance had the urge to remark on his return to form. “I’ll count quieter if you want to get back to sleep.”

“Nah, it’s fine, I’m super awake” Lance said unconvincingly as he yawned and stretched his arms above his head. “I have a 9AM anyway so I’ll just hop in the shower.” Keith shrugged and returned to the floor to continue his exercises.

When Lance came out of the bathroom ten minutes later, Keith faltered in his crunches. “Does it only take you that long to get ready?”

“Hm?” Lance looked up from his backpack, which he was shoving his discarded notes and laptop into. “Why would I need any longer than like ten minutes?”

“Don’t you spend time on your appearance at all?”

“I comb my hair sometimes, if that’s what you mean.”

Keith’s eyebrows lowered. “That’s not what I mean.” He got up from his crunch position to leer at Lance’s face up-close. “You have to at least moisturize, right? Your skin is softer than mine!”

Lance wasn’t sure what Keith’s deal was about moisturizing, but having him suddenly in his personal space was a little terrifying. The truth was, he usually slept in a face-mask that was supposed to “reinvigorate” his pores, but since coming to college, his skin care routine had fallen short due to time, money, and laziness constraints. “Look, I promise you, this is just my natural beauty. If I could share it with you, I would,” he said, backing up and pointing finger-guns in Keith’s direction. Keith seemed utterly unimpressed, but as he turned back to the living room and caught the light on his face, Lance noticed a slight flush – probably from the exercise. “Anyway, I’m gonna go grab coffee with Hunk and head to class for the day. I’ll be back at one. Think you can handle being alone in my apartment while I’m gone?”

Keith was back to his crunches, muttering a “96” that shot Lance’s ego through the gut. “Better than- huff –you can,- huff –I imagine.”

“Fantastic!” Lance said through gritted teeth. “Oh and-“ He grabbed a post-it note and started writing. “Here’s my cell number if you have any emergencies during the day. Feel free to eat my food and watch TV if you want.”

Keith paused again to tie his hair back into a ponytail. “I’ll be sure to enjoy my stay at the Hotel Sanchez.”

“Great,” Lance sounded, pulling his bag over his shoulder and grabbing his keys. “Wait, how do you know my last name?”

“Family reunion photo. Above your TV,” Keith was now doing lunges, which was both hot and ridiculous-looking. 

“Oh,” he replied, somewhat embarrassed. “Well, okay then!” He wasn’t sure why he was still hesitating. “Bye!” Why wasn’t he moving.

Oh, Keith’s legs. Keith’s legs were the reason.

“See ya,” came a monotonic voice, snapping Lance out of his stupor. Lance forced his legs to move him through the front door and cursed his slowly rising Kinsey score.

\-------------------------------------------------------

“Someone’s early. For once.” Lance turned around in his seat in the campus Starbucks and beamed at Hunk, who thankfully looked just as tired as him.

“Hey, I’ve only had to cancel on our pre-9AM brunches, like, five times,” Lance said, shrugging.

Hunk pulled out a chair across from him and plopped down. “Yea, and we’ve only had nine 9AM’s so far this semester.” Hunk pulled out two croissants, prompting Lance to reach for one, and Hunk slapped his hand away. “Uh-uh. You didn’t deliver on the ice cream cake at Pidge’s party, so you’re getting none of this.”

“I told you already, there was an accident on the road and it caused a shit-load of traffic,” Lance grumbled, inching his fingers closer to the croissants.

“You said on Saturday that you had gotten lost.”

“Yea, sure, I got lost while in traffic. So, not my fault!” As he went for a croissant again, Hunk caught his hand and held it against the table.

“You’re lying.”

“Are you kidding me? Why would I lie about this? Just accept my lack of direction, forgive me, and give me a damn pastry!”

“Okay, one – I’ve known you for too long to not know when you’re lying. Two – you would never admit that you got lost. Three – I saw some weird dude sneaking around your car when I left in the morning.”

“You saw Keith and you didn’t think to tell me about it?!”

“Yes. Who’s Keith?” Hunk grinned as Lance realized his mistake, pulling his arms back and crossing them.

“Nobody. Just some hitchhiker I helped out. I picked him up at a gas station around where I grabbed the cake.”

“Which was where?” Hunk narrowed his eyes.

“Around here – some station near Santa Fe.”

“Are you saying you picked up an ice cream cake an hour before you would get to Pidge’s house?” Hunk asked, incredulous.

“Look, I knew the store was having a sale, so I thought it’d be fine! Pidge would want me to save money, wouldn’t they?”

“Bullshit, Lance! You literally never go grocery shopping, how would you know there was a sale?”

“Okay, it doesn’t matter! Just – croissant! NOW!” Lance lunged a third time but Hunk skillfully avoided him by moving the bag an inch to the right, causing Lance to slam his face onto the table.

“Anyway...we were talking about Keith,” Hunk continued, biting from the croissant reserved for himself.

“What about him? I gave him a ride, and that’s it. End of story,” Lance muttered, sipping his coffee ruefully.

“That doesn’t explain why he was creeping around your Jeep in the morning. And why you have a text from him.” Hunk pointed to Lance’s phone sitting on the table. Lance looked down, surprised to see Keith texting him so soon after he left.

From [Unknown Number]: hey its keith  
From [Unknown Number]: why do you only have soda and beer in your fridge  
From [Unknown Number]: you dont have any cups either  
From [Unknown Number]: am i supposed to drink water from the tap like a goddamn dog or what

Lance blushed immediately and shoved his phone in his pocket. “We’re just…talking about…”

“The contents of your fridge. In your apartment.” Hunk looked suspicious until realization dawned on him. “Oh my god, you had a one night stand!”

“Shut up!” Lance hissed, peeking around to make sure nobody heard. Luckily, the bulk of people were on the other side of the Starbucks, in line. “I did not have a one night stand, okay?”

“Okay, fine, but you slept with a hitchhiking rando!”

“I did not! And he’s not a rando. He’s just…staying with me for a while. He’s having problems with his parents and he needed a place to crash. That’s. It.” Lance once again found himself leaning back and crossing his arms, emulating a certain posture he was trying to forget, and immediately sat up straight.

“That’s awfully kind of you,” Hunk paused, drumming his fingers. “And I feel awfully suspicious.”

“Don’t go all Pidge on me,” Lance grumbled.

“So it has absolutely nothing to do with Keith being attractive? Nothing at all?”

“Nope! What, do you have a crush on him or something after seeing him try to carjack me?”

“Lance.” Hunk was deadly serious, and extended an arm holding the second croissant. “I’ll give this to you if you spill.”

Lance was about to refuse it and stick to his guns but his stomach growled in betrayal at the sight of the buttery, flaky goodness. “Fine. He’s like, a little hot. But I’m not going to take advantage of him or anything. He’s going through rough times.”

Hunk considered for a moment whether he believed Lance’s claims, then handed him the croissant. Lance practically inhaled it.

“How long is he staying with you?” Hunk asked, getting the tea he ordered out and swishing it around absentmindedly.

Lance struggled to chew an overly-large bite of croissant enough to speak, “Not sure yet. But I’m cool with him staying as long as he helps out with the rent and groceries a little.”

“The groceries you don’t buy.”

“Shut it.” Lance finished swallowing. “I don’t know, I think things are going pretty well so far. I'm driving him to his parent’s later today and…we’ll see how that goes.”

“Lance,” Hunk said seriously, taking hold of Lance’s hands.

“What.”

“I’m so proud of you. You’re actually becoming a decent human being.”

“Oh, fuck you,” spat Lance, shoving the hands away and laughing. “Everyone knows I’m the most decent human being on earth.” Hunk rolled his eyes and took a sip of his tea. 

“Want to head to history?” Hunk asked. He gathered his stuff and stood up.

“No. But let’s go.” Lance led the way, coffee held like a crucifix.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Lance didn’t get the opportunity to text Keith back until his break between his history and physics classes. When he pulled out his phone, he saw no new messages from the “Unknown Number” and wondered if Keith could manage to die of dehydration in an hour and a half. Hastily adding Keith’s name into his phone, he typed out a response.

From Lance: I think there’s some red solo cups under my sink!!!

From Keith: of course there are  
From Keith: found them  
From Keith: also you have like no food here

From Lance: What are you talking about?? I definitely have some Spaghetti-O’s in the pantry!

From Keith: okay yea i see that  
From Keith: i mean real food you can make real meals out of

From Lance: I’m not that into “real food”  
From Lance: Why, do you know how to cook???

From Keith: chill with the punctuation  
From Keith: i’m not a huge fan of cooking but i know the basics

From Lance: Chill with the shit grammar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  
From Lance: Can you make mac and cheese??

From Keith: yea if I have macaroni. and cheese.

From Lance: No like the Kraft blue box kind with the powder!

From Keith: …  
From Keith: i’m not texting you anymore

From Lance: Wait but can you make it????  
From Lance: Hello???????  
From Lance: KEITH!!!

\-------------------------------------------------------

When Lance got out of his last class for the day, he practically ran to the campus parking lot. Keith still hadn’t texted him back but he figured he knew to be ready. He still didn’t want to admit that he was somewhat excited to go see him again.

When he approached his apartment building, Lance was surprised to see Keith sitting on the steps of his apartment building, back in his red sweatshirt/skinny jeans/combat boots combo waiting for him. As he saw Lance pull up, he immediately stood to get into the passenger seat.

“All ready?” Lance asked, nervous himself. Keith looked completely calm.

“As much as I can be, I guess.” The only chink in the armor was a slight tightening of his lips. Lance was in total awe of his strength…not that he would ever tell him.

“Cool, can you set up the address on the GPS?” Keith complied, grabbing the small machine and typing as Lance backed out of the driveway. “So, when we get there, I assume you want me to just wait in the car, right?”

“As opposed to…?” questioned Keith, not looking up from the GPS.

“Uh…being…not in the car?” Keith set the GPS on the dashboard and huffed out a sigh. It seemed to be a signature for him recently.

“Look, I appreciate the concern but I promise you, I’ll be fine. I really doubt my parents will be that adverse to me moving out of their house, especially after what happened.”

“Gotcha.” Lance tapped anxiously on the steering wheel. “So do you need me as a getaway driver? Y’know, like, ‘shut up and drive!’?”

“No, but I do like the shut up and drive parts.” Lance pouted in Keith’s direction and was surprised to see him smiling a little. Hopefully the banter was cheering him up.

Once they arrived at Keith’s parent’s house, Keith went in without much prelude, leaving Lance to stew in the front seat. He noticed a shiny red motorcycle in the open garage of the small house – he didn’t peg Keith’s conservative dad to be the type that drove one, but hey, Lance’s mamá said to never judge a book by its cover.

After about an hour of sitting and scrolling through his phone, Lance was startled when Keith yanked on the trunk door and shouted, muffled by the door, “unlock the back!” Lance scrambled for the button and he heard the trunk open.

“Everything go alright?” Lance asked tentatively, turning around. Keith was shoving a single large suitcase and a gym bag in the back, and held a container about the size of a small cooler.

“About as well as I had hoped. Sorry for the delay.” Keith opened the passenger side door and Lance turned the key, expecting him to get in. “Oh, no, I’m taking my bike back to your place.”

“Can’t you just put it with your stuff in the back? There’s plenty of room.” Lance gestured behind him with his thumb.

Keith made a face as if he had insulted him. “You can’t just lay a bike down in a car! It could get all banged up and leak everywhere.”

Lance squinted in confusion. “Your bike…leaks?”

Keith shoved the container he was holding into the front seat and went into the garage. To Lance’s surprise, he took out a pair of keys, started up the red motorcycle, and backed it out. Lance rolled down the passenger side window, eyes as big as saucers.

“That’s your bike?!” he nearly shouted.

“Uh, yea,” Keith responded, looking it over a bit. “I mentioned to you that I rode one. Remember, that’s how I got my job at the autoshop?”

“I thought you meant a bike like a…” Lance knew what he was about to say was stupid but he figured there was no stopping it. “A bicycle.”

Keith stared at him for a few seconds, seemingly mystified. “Why would I bring a bicycle to an autobody shop, Lance?” he asked in an increasingly pedantic manner.

“Okay fine, whatever.” Lance waved his arms around, hoping to physically clear his ignorance out of the air. “By the way, what’s this box?” He leaned in to the passenger seat get a closer look.

“Oh, that’s my pet lizard. His name is Red. There’s also a bag of dead crickets attached if you want any,” Keith added offhandedly, taking his motorcycle out of park. “Now you lead the way back to your place, okay?”

Lance leapt up from his close proximity to the box, trying to get rid of images of lizards chewing up bits of cricket from his mind. “S-sounds good!” he squeaked out, shaky hands back on the wheel.

As they pulled out of the housing development and drove back to his place, Lance realized that in only two short days this kid had gone from a total stranger to someone whose entire life (and reptilian dependents) was sitting in his car. Despite his concern over what transpired between Keith and his parents, the thought of Keith relying on him this much warmed his heart. Lance had always attempted to be the leader of his friend group, to be inspiring, but he always fell short somewhere along a “comic relief” level of importance. As he looked into the rearview mirror at Keith’s long hair flowing in the wind, he smiled softly to himself. If for no one else, Lance could maybe be important to Keith.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why yes I did finally include literally any other character in this fic.........i'm glad u noticed.........
> 
> again comment if u like this but honestly even if u don't I'll still probably be writing this bc winter break dysphoria AMIRIGHT ahahahaha... i highly recommend self medicating with fic writing friends
> 
> ok see u next time


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost had some major writer's block and I got worried that I might not get a chapter out before bed but GUESS WHAT i got over it. Also I want so badly for Keith to be autistic but man this fic would be basically 60% self-insert at that point. Also tbh a foster kid actually being brought in enough times for formal diagnosis is probs pretty unrealistic anyway...undiagnosed autism?? Anyway not relevant to this chapter but I hope y'all enjoy!

“You know, if you let me put this stuff away by myself, I would’ve been done an hour ago.” Keith muttered, shoving another pair of boxers into a plastic drawer. When they arrived back at the apartment, Lance had almost blown a gasket when he realized he didn’t actually have the storage space for Keith to put his stuff. After ignoring a suggestion from Keith that he was fine with just living out of his suitcase, Lance ran back out the door. He scored all of Target for a cheap set of plastic drawers and made the staff check the back to get red ones.

“Yea, but I like looking at your stuff! It gives me, like, perspective and shit,” Lance said, eyeballing Keith’s hair dryer, which seemed to have nearly seventeen different settings.

“Perspective into what?”

“Into you! Your life! What kind of person you are!” For emphasis, Lance searched around and held up a neon pink-and-blue hat that read “TURNT” in large block letters. “Who knew you were into ragers?”

“Give me that!” snapped Keith, fighting with a now-giggling Lance to grab it. “One of my foster sisters got me that a few years back. I don’t actually wear it.”

“Can I wear it then?!”Lance attempted puppy dog eyes and happily leaned his head forward, allowing Keith to plop it on his head.

“Fine. Just be careful with it.” Looking down, Keith grabbed some shirts previously “folded” by Lance to re-do them.

“What’s your foster sister doing now?” Lance asked, pulling out his phone’s front camera to arrange the hat at the douchiest angle possible.

Keith shrugged. “Not sure. I know she was dating some dude at the time. Maybe they got married?”

“Wait, so you don’t keep up with her? She seemed to know you well enough to get you this gag gift.”

“Yea, I mean, we were close,” Keith replied. “But foster kids are always being traded in and out. If I kept up with every foster parent and sibling I’ve ever had, my family would be upwards of 20 people.”

“And the problem with that is….?” Lance stared at him dubiously, gesturing at his own family smiling together in an extra-wide frame above his television.

“Okay, well I guess to someone like you that seems normal. But keeping up with that many people that come in and out of your life…it’s a lot. It’s just easier to forget sometimes.” Keith stuffed a stack of re-folded shirts into one of the drawers.

“Do you have any people in your life that have been…y’know, constant?”

Keith stopped to consider for a moment, leaning a hand on one hip. “I think my social worker from when I was a kid qualifies. But I haven’t seen her since my parents adopted me a few years back.”

“Wow. That’s kinda depressing.” Lance sat back on his knees, suddenly sad.

“It’s not a huge deal. I’m not that concerned.” Now finished unpacking the suitcase, Keith unzipped the gym bag and started taking out some femme-looking clothes Lance had never seen before.

Pawing at a blue floral mini-skirt, Lance was in awe. He secretly always found floral, girly patterns appealing, both on other people, and the few times he could get away with it on himself.

“Hey, are you still going to wear these kinds of things?” Lance asked, holding up the skirt as an example.

Keith grabbed it and began to fold it with the rest. “Probably not often, but I figured I should keep a few femme clothes around for ‘Girl Days’.” He slid them into the bottom drawer. “If you ever want to try them on, it’s fine by me.”

“Me?!” gasped Lance, mentally clutching at his masculinity. “Sorry, Keith, I don’t have the cojones to wear this stuff.”

“And I do?” Keith inquired, jutting his hips out slightly in reminder, causing Lance to sputter. “No, trust me, I get it. How about…” Keith knelt down and dug around, pulling out a plastic bag. “Would you feel comfortable trying something like these?”

To Lance’s chagrin, Keith pulled out a black lacy lingerie set. All around the bands were little bows with skulls on them, like they came straight out of a Hot Topic. Shakily reaching a hand out, Lance felt that, despite the intricate design, it was soft like satin.

“You could try wearing them under your clothes if you want, and no one would know. I’m probably not going to get much use out of them now,” Keith pushed the bag further into Lance’s hands.

All Lance could muster was a shaky, “f-for me?”

Keith shot him an apologetic smile. “Yes, Lance. Although I don’t know if black is really your color.” Apparently considering that conversation over, Keith got up to continue the unpacking process.

Lance was still lightyears behind in his mind. The idea of Keith wearing this gothic black lingerie set. The idea of Lance wearing this gothic black lingerie set. Both thoughts got his heart racing.

“Sure. I’ll…put them in my room,” Lance murmured, stumbling into a standing position. “By the way, why do you even have these?” he asked, hugging the bag to his chest.

“Hm?” Keith turned from the drawer set. “Oh, well, like I said, I have sex with men.” He looked Lance dead in the eyes and smiled, which only slightly lessened the intensity of his gaze. “Isn’t that what guys are into?”

Lance was pretty certain Keith used past-tense when discussing his sexual habits before, and that there was some kind of undercurrent to what he was saying that he just couldn’t grasp. What he wasn’t certain of, however, was what those two things meant. Unable to stand the attention any longer, Lance muttered out a distressed, “Sure!” and hurried into his bedroom, passing an incredulous Keith on the way.

\-------------------------------------------------------

The next week passed quickly, with Lance and Keith falling into a comfortable rhythm around each other. Keith had insisted on using the futon for sleep despite Lance’s own insistence on him taking the bed, but Lance acquiesced after a menacing “I will fight you over this, and I will beat you,” that he honestly couldn’t deny. The red set of drawers chilled in the corner next to the television and the box containing Red sat on top of it. Lance made sure to make a quick exit whenever Keith got out the dead crickets.

Lance would go to classes during the day and found that he now had a great urge to get as much of his work done during his downtime on campus as possible. Hunk was astonished, since usually their work on problem sets consisted mostly of Hunk trying to ignore Lance’s wild ideas for procrastination.

Meanwhile, Keith would text Lance updates on his search for a job and an apartment somewhere in the area, which made Lance’s stomach feel a little queasy. He also snapchatted him selfies occasionally when going to the gym. Lance supposed they weren’t meant to be indulgent since they were usually paired with “look at how this douchebag left the weights” or “can you believe theyre playing your shitty taylor swift music here”. Lance’s camera roll had a folder full of screen shots.

It was the little things about Keith from their shared home life in the afternoons and evenings that slowly grew on him. For instance, when Keith was listening to something on his headphones, he wouldn’t dance with his whole body like Lance was wont to do, but he would do subtle head nods and foot-tapping that he didn’t even notice. Another quirk was Keith’s inability to walk slowly to do something. If it suddenly occurred to him to feed Red, he would jog to the enclosure. If he needed to pee, he would jog to the bathroom. His movements just to stand up to hit a button on the remote were quick and meticulously planned like a man on a mission. 

Just when Lance thought they couldn’t get any more domestic, they started watching Netflix together on the futon, which was covered in blankets due to it doubling as Keith’s bed. Together they began watching Jane the Virgin, described as a “telenovela, but in English, but it’s SO GOOD, you have to watch it, Lance!” by Shiro’s girlfriend Allura the last time they had spoken.

At first, Keith wasn’t particularly into it (“This is so unrealistic.” “Why is everyone being so dramatic?” “Can you translate the Spanish- oh wait there’s subtitles.”), but as the nights went on, one episode become two, which became five, which became a complete marathon session.

Finishing the sixth episode in a row and still going strong on a Friday night, Lance realized they had gotten much physically closer, huddled under the same blanket and leaning their shoulders on each other. For a minute or two, the stream faltered so Keith reached out to pause it to allow it to buffer.

Lance suddenly felt awkward being so close to Keith with nothing to focus on but the scent of his shampoo (some kind of smoky pine?) and their bare elbows brushing lightly underneath the blanket. “So, uh, who’s team are you on?” he asked, inclining his head to get a better look at Keith.

“Team?” Keith was still fiddling with the remote to see how far the episode had buffered so far.

“Team Rafael or Team Michael for who Jane should be with? You seem like a Team Michael to me, being all justice-oriented and shit.”

“I don’t know,” Keith replied, shrugging. “I mean, you have to feel pity for all Michael’s been through, with his girlfriend sort of being impregnated by this other hot dude. He only lied to Jane because he had to – he’d be a bad cop if he didn’t. But I don’t know, I like Rafael too.”

“Oh really?” Lance stuck his nose in the air and crossed his arms, trying to emulate Keith’s behavior next to him. “The explanation better be good.”

“He’s just a cool character, I don’t know. Also, I don’t look like that,” he said, pointing at Lance’s exaggerated posture.

“For someone saying ‘I don’t know’ a lot, you sure seem to have an opinion,” hissed Lance, getting in Keith’s face. From this close, he noticed a curious pink tinge dotting Keith’s cheeks.

“I don’t kno-“ He took a deep breath, catching himself. “I just… have a thing for cute Hispanic guys.”

For a moment Lance wondered if he heard him right. Then again, Keith was staring straight at him as he said it. Then again, he was leaning so close to him, Keith didn’t have a choice of whether to look at him or not.

“Keith…”

“Yea, Lance?” Keith’s voice suddenly got soft, his breath tickling Lance’s chin.

“You do know….that Rafael is Italian, right?” Keith’s face fell.

“He- he is?!” Keith immediately turned back to the remote and skipped forward to a still containing Rafael. “But…but he’s definitely brown!”

“It’s a Hollywood tan, Keith!” Lance, now cackling uncontrollably, patted Keith on the back. “His last name is Solano, Keith. He’s Italian as fuck.”

“Oh my god.” Keith dropped his elbows to his knees, hiding his face in his hands.

“But don’t worry, I heard you loud and clear! You like cute Hispanic guys- I’ll let the next one I see know.”

“Oh my god,” Keith repeated, an immovable force.

“Still a cute confession, though, at least from my perspective!” Lance was probably ragging on him too much, but in the past week, he had taken numerous losses in their battles of passive and active aggression.

“You asshole!” Keith started, now laughing a bit himself, and tried to scurry away from the futon. Lance tightened the arm he had left on Keith’s shoulder, yanking him back down.

“Nuh-uh, Sonic, not fast enough!” Keith struggled for a moment, then resigned himself to being held practically on Lance’s lap. The two laughed together for a while before it petered out into a relaxed silence. 

“Hey,” Lance prompted, causing Keith to look up with a slight pout. Lance bit his lip to keep it from doing anything irrational. “Is this okay?”

“Is what okay?”

“Me…holding you like this?” Lance asked, concerned he might have crossed some kind of line. Just in case Keith did desire escape, he loosened his grip.

“No, uh,” Keith mumbled awkwardly. “This is- this is fine. I’m comfortable.”

Lance beamed down at him and tightened his arms around Keith’s shoulders. “Want to watch another episode?”

Keith smiled and leaned his head back on Lance’s shoulder. “Sure.” Carefully not to knock Keith over, Lance surged forward to grab the remote and start the now-fully-buffered episode once again.

After a few minutes, Keith yawned and fidgeted a little, as if trying to get more comfortable while half-sitting on Lance’s thighs. It made Lance wish he could have a lower metabolism just for the purpose of having more fat for Keith to lean on. As Keith started dosing about halfway through the episode, Lance brushed his fingers through the ends of his hair lightly, ghosting his fingertips over the back of Keith’s neck. Eventually Lance’s eyelids felt heavy too and he dozed off slowly, wondering to himself how a mullet had become so entrancing to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally some gotdam romance. they probably need to dtr soon
> 
> also once more many thank you's to everyone who continues to read and comment!!!! writing this and seeing the feedback has been very uplifting for while at home (i've probably said this like 7 times already but I WILL SAY IT AS MUCH AS I NEED TO SO Y'ALL KNOW I APPRECIATE YOU) ok byyeeee


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay!!! this chapter is literally twice as long as the others so it took a bit longer to edit. i have no self control

“Lance, what are you doing?”

“Oh, you know, cleaning,” he said dismissively, trying and failing to sweep the living room.

“Why are you trying to use a broom on carpet?” Keith paused the episode of X Files he was watching to eye Lance suspiciously. “Should I be expecting company?”

“What! No,” scoffed Lance, raising his arms up and knocking the broom handle against the ceiling fan. “Ack!”

“Smooth,” Keith said, rolling his eyes and unpausing the episode.

Unbeknownst to Keith, Lance’s 21st birthday was on Monday. Following the tradition of his friends getting together in celebration of birthdays (especially ones in which excessive drinking was appropriate), Hunk, Pidge, Shiro, and Allura were going to arrive that night at 5PM. It was currently 1PM and Lance still hadn’t told Keith what he would be subject to yet.

Lance wasn’t exactly sure why he was so nervous about telling Keith about the birthday party. The two had become close, sometimes even physically close, in these past three weeks, so he figured Keith would probably want to know. Usually, Lance would have spilled the moment the party plans were made, given his typical urge to convince others to stroke his ego. Instead, his anxiety over Keith meeting his friends had caused him to not broach the topic at all, which was ridiculous because it wasn’t like they were dating!

As Lance shoved the broom back into the front hall closet that held the rest of his barely-used cleaning supplies, he thought back on the instances of flirting and cuddling that started occurring with more and more frequency between him and Keith. He wasn’t about to complain or anything like that – Keith was a perfectly pleasant person to be around – but he wasn’t sure what kind of relationship that put them in. Oftentimes, when he still lived in Albuquerque, he, Hunk, and Pidge would sometimes cuddle while watching Star Wars marathons in Pidge’s basement, and many of the jokes Lance made in high school with his friends were innuendos. Maybe the difference was that Keith was Keith. He was beautiful and brave and didn’t let things like anxiety stop him from acting. His sudden rush of affection made Lance flinch, knocking over the broom and clattering all the contents of the closet to the floor.

“Dude, are you sure you’re okay?” Keith called from his perch on the futon.

“Just fine!” Lance shouted back, kneeling down to grab each item. As he scrambled to hold all the items in his arms at once, he saw Keith’s socked foot approach his vision.

“Lance.”

“I promise, nothing weird is going on!” Lance blurted out, standing up and almost stabbing Keith with a broom handle, which he skillfully evaded.

“Does this have anything to do with it being your birthday in two days?” Keith asked innocently.

“What?! How did you know it was my birthday?” Lance wondered if Keith was telepathic and instantly regretted all his fleeting thoughts of romance.

“You keep a calendar in your room and the only thing written on it is a bunch of circles and exclamation points surrounding the 16th saying ‘My Birthday!’ in all caps. I saw it the first day I stayed here.”

“Oh,” Lance said, deflated. “Well…yes. Maybe. There might be a slight…” he twiddled his thumbs and looked at the ground. “Shindig.”

“Lance, are you having a birthday party tonight.”

Lance winced. “Would you be mad if I was?”

Keith groaned and rubbed his forehead, drawing Lance’s eyes to his fingerless gloves which he seemingly only removed in order to shower. “Lance, I’m not mad. This isn’t even my apartment. I don’t live live here.” The thought stirred sadness somewhere deep in Lance’s gut.

Shaking his head, Keith grabbed the cleaning supplies from Lance and shoved them into the closet, slamming the door shut with his hip. “I can just stay in the bedroom, I don’t mind.”

“You’ll stay in the…what?!” Lance wasn’t expecting that kind of reaction. “No, I want you to meet everyone! Why would I want you to stay hidden?”

“Well I figured there was some kind of reason you didn’t tell me about it.” Keith shrugged and made his way back to the futon.

“Well it wasn’t because I didn’t want you to see them! You’re my friend, Keith,” Lance said, although he wondered if ‘friend’ was the right word to describe it.

As Keith plopped back down onto the futon, he seemed to stare hard at Lance for a moment, then smiled and slipped his headphones back on. “Don’t worry, I’ll be ready when they get here.”

\-------------------------------------------------------

Ten minutes to five, Lance was on his knees by the TV, trying desperately to hook up the stereo system. Ever since the beginning of the school year and Hunk and Lance got separate apartments, Hunk had offered to help him set it up, but he stupidly claimed that he was so much better at electronics that he didn’t need any help. If Hunk showed up and it still was in the box it came in, Lance would never hear the end of it.

“Hey Keith!” Lance shouted over his shoulder, trying to find a wire that was missing. “Do you know anything about setting up a stereo?” As long as they got their story straight, Hunk would accept the success as Lance’s.

“Uh, not really,” Keith called back from the bathroom, where he was evidently getting ready. He had been in there fifteen minutes already. “But I can come take a look as soon as I finish up.”

“Thanks!” Lance huffed and got up from the stereo, considering it a lost cause for now, and padded into the kitchen to get out the remaining Solo cups from under the sink. Sitting on the counter were a few actual cups Keith had forced him to buy after he accidentally crushed a Solo cup of water after an intense workout.

When Keith came out of the bathroom a second later, Lance almost had a heart attack. Keith was wearing his classic black skinny jeans, but instead of a hoodie to hide his form, he wore a cut-off T-shirt that went down to just above the jeans, leaving a slight sliver of skin. His black binder peeked out from the collar, and his raven hair was pulled back in a high, but short, ponytail.

“W-what are you wearing?” Lance asked, voice almost failing him.

“Uh, clothes,” he replied, kneeling down to take a look at the stereo. In all the days Keith had been crashing at Lance’s apartment, he had only worn more femme-looking clothes once, and Lance wasn’t even there when it happened. Apparently while Lance was (unfortunately) in classes, Keith had worn one of his black dresses from his self-described “Emo High School Days” to bring his bike in for work in order to flirt his way into a discount. Lance suspected the discount came from Keith’s adorable appearance rather than any kind of flirting ability, which was notoriously…….non-existent.

“Lance?” Keith called out, breaking Lance out of his trance, and when he blinked, he noticed Keith was much closer. “I fixed it. Well, I didn’t actually fix it. I just plugged it in.”

“Th-thanks,” murmured Lance, trying desperately to ignore the hints of smoky eye shadow and faint lip-gloss Keith sported as well.

“I don’t know what you’d do without me and my clearly superior intellect,” laughed Keith, patting him on the shoulder and leaving him reeling.

“Keith- why are you wearing those clothes?” The moment the words left Lance’s mouth, he regretted it, because Keith’s expression suddenly turned hostile.

“I wanted to look nice for your friends today, so I dressed more femme. Is that not allowed?” This time, when he struck his signature arms-crossed pose, Lance found it aggressive and upsetting.

“No! No, of course not! You look great! But you look fine as a boy too, trust me. You always look fantastic, Keith!” Words just kept pouring out without his permission, so he swallowed to get a grip. “Don’t worry, my friends will love you.” He did his best to ignore how much it sounded like he was talking to a boyfriend.

Keith perked up a little, hesitantly relaxing his scowl. “They will?”

“Uh, yea. I don’t know why they wouldn’t,” Lance said, shrugging. “It might just be a little confusing.”

“Because I look feminine?”

“No, because they don’t know who you are or that you live here.”

Keith paused, blinking dumbly for a moment, then the anger resurfaced with a vengeance. “Are you saying you haven’t told anyone but Hunk that I-“

Thankfully cutting off a possibly dangerous conversation, Lance heard a knock on the door and rushed to get it (“saved by the bell!” he nearly said, but he valued his life). The moment he turned the lock, the door burst open and an overly-excited Allura jumped on him, holding him tight in her freakishly muscular arms.

“Lance! I’m so happy to see you! Happy birthday!” she shouted, beaming down at him.

“Allura, my birthday isn’t even until Monday, chill a little-“ Lance tried to say, only to be drowned in her long hair as she pulled him close to her breast once more. Once upon a time, when he first met her, this closeness would be exciting, but now Allura’s presence just felt more motherly than anything.

“Shiro and I picked up this marvelous wine that we think you’ll love!” she twittered on, only letting go as Shiro came up behind her.

“I’ll say. Allura did her part by sampling it a bit in the car,” Shiro piped up, fake-glaring at his tipsy girlfriend. “I’ll set it down here.” To Lance’s surprise, Shiro brought up two grocery bags filled with several bottles of wine. When Pidge first suggested a 21st birthday for Lance in which everyone could get hammered in the groupchat, Lance expected Shiro to be the one veto-ing it, not supplying it.

“Why Lance, is this a new girlfriend?” Allura asked, leaning to look behind Lance. When Lance turned around, he realized Keith was no longer standing behind him, but almost hiding behind the wall separating the bathroom from the kitchen. His posture and facial expression reminded Lance of when they first drove from Santa Fe to Albuquerque and Keith refused to mutter a single word.

“Oh, no,” Lance stammered, blushing a bit at the notion of Keith being either a girl- or boyfriend. “This is Keith. He’s a friend. And kind of my roommate. But not my boyfriend.”

Allura gasped slightly and bowed her head. “My apologies. For my comment and the fact that you have to live with Lance.” She winked in Keith’s direction, eliciting a slight smirk from him.

“Hey!” huffed Lance, angry that after only meeting two or three times, Allura already felt comfortable enough teasing him. “Also, why didn’t you guys bring Pidge with you?”

“We dropped them at Hunk’s. They said the two of them had some kind of surprise for you.”

“Lance!” Shiro called from the fridge, using his booming “dad” voice. “Why do you have beer in here? You’re not 21 yet.”

“Shiro you literally just brought me fucking wine for the party.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t be disappointed in your drinking habits before this.”

After a bit more banter involving Shiro ruffling Lance’s hair and telling Keith some dad jokes while Allura sipped begrudgingly at some water Shiro forced into her hand, quiet knocking sounded the arrival of Hunk and Pidge. Before Lance could get to the door, Pidge decided to let themselves in, with Hunk following, carrying something that looked alarmingly like a cakebox.

“’Sup sluts,” announced Pidge, hugging everyone in quick succession. When they got to Keith, they held out their hand for a handshake, and Keith accepted it. Lance was glad he was at least sort of fitting in with his friends.

As Hunk set the box delicately on the table, Lance’s interest was suddenly piqued again. “Oo, what’s this?” he asked, leaning in. Hunk slapped his hand away.

“This is a special gift from Pidge and I. We were so glad you decided to take up the cake-buying role for our last party-“ Oh no. Lance did not like the smirk on Pidge’s face. “that we decided to get you a cake of our own.” Lance knew there would be some kind of repercussion for the ice cream cake incident – even though Hunk (and through text-tag, Pidge) knew that it was due to a certain cute boy now leaning over Lance’s shoulder to also get a look. Hunk lifted the cover off of the box and Lance gagged a little.

Lined with some kind of trash bag, the box was just full of milk.

“Grooooss, guys!” shouted Lance, cowering under the counter as Pidge and Hunk laughed at his misery. “I paid good money for that ice cream cake! This is just cruel!”

“And I repaid you with something equal in value. Let this be a lesson to you, Lance,” Pidge said, rubbing his shoulder in fake comfort as if they were a parent consoling him after some kind of harsh discipline…which this was.

“Yea, Lance!” huffed Hunk, for good measure. “No more soppy cakes in the future.”

“It was pretty tasty,” Keith added, finally managing to contribute to a conversation without being prompted and eliciting the group’s attention. “Shame that you couldn’t come through.” Hunk and Pidge grinned at Keith joining in on the roast.

“I like this guy,” Pidge said as Hunk poured them some drinks.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Throughout the night, Lance did his best to keep up appearances as the birthday boy while simultaneously trying to eavesdrop on every conversation Keith had. It was imperative to him that his friends accepted Keith and vice versa. The reason, well….he was unsure what the reason was. This anxiety brought Lance wandering back to the wine every so often.

First, Allura, in her drunken excitement, forced Keith to show her how to feed Red. Allura worked a lot with lab animal safety at the research institute, and so she enjoyed interaction with small animals greatly. Hunk was chatting Lance’s ear off about this girl Shay he met at some kind of luncheon for the few students of Pacific Islander background at their university, but all Lance could focus on were Keith’s delicate fingers holding up a dead cricket, showing Allura where to toss it in the lizard enclosure.

“Dude, why do you look like you’re about to puke and cream your pants at the same time?”

“What?” Lance focused back on Hunk. “Yea, Shay, she’s hot, I get it.” Trying to hide the heat in his cheeks, he downed the remainder of his cup while Hunk continued raving over Shay.

Next, Lance found Keith and Pidge doing “shots” of wine together while discussing X Files, inspired by an “I Want to Believe” sticker on Keith’s laptop. They were arguing over what Lance assumed were episode arcs, Pidge praising the creativity of the “cryptid episodes” while Keith defended the intrigue of the “conspiracy arc”. It had only been about an hour since everyone had arrived, but Keith already sported a full Asian glow, cheeks as red as his glossed lips.

“Are you sure he’s not your girlfriend?” came a booming voice from behind him.

“Shiro!” Lance nearly jumped out of his skin, turning to look at Shiro, who placed his non-prosthetic hand on Lance’s shoulder.

“You certainly look like you like him,” Shiro said, smiling knowingly. What he knew, Lance was uncertain.

“I’m just glad he’s getting along with people. Sometimes he can be a little stand-off-ish.”

“You sound like you’re talking about your cat. And from the looks of it, he seems to be living like a cat. Sleeping on your couch, eating your food…”

“I have no problem letting him stay here until he gets his own place,” Lance nearly growled. “And don’t mention it to him, he’s always telling me about how bad he feels about ‘mooching’ off of me.”

Shiro furrowed his eyebrows. “It’s usually you who’s doing the mooching.”

“I know! That’s why it’s fine. He can stay here as long as he wants.”

“And then what?”

Lance stared up at him. “And then what what?”

“Once he gets a job and his own place. What’ll happen then?”

“Well….” Lance didn’t really like to dwell on it. “He’ll move out, I guess. We’ll still see each other occasionally, I’m sure. Like I do with you guys.”

“As friends?” Shiro prompted.

“Yea, sure, whatever, friends is fine.” Lance knew he was babbling, but he could only focus so much while trying to avoid both Shiro’s pseudo-fatherly concern and the way Keith looked when he laughed with Pidge over something. “I just want him to be happy,” he said, realizing it was true.

“Wow, Lance, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of you caring that much about someone…other than yourself of course,” Shiro laughed, ruffling Lance’s hair for the millionth time that night.

“Har-har.”

“Hey guys!” shouted Hunk from the living room, having to call a few times before finally gaining everyone’s attention. “In honor of Lance surviving long enough to hit legal drinking age, let’s watch The Force Awakens for maybe the 37th time!”

“Oo, I’ve never seen that!” piped up Allura, the only one besides Lance genuinely excited by the movie.

“C’mon, I’ve only made you guys watch it like five times!” Lance protested.

“Yea, only five times in theaters. Don’t forget all the DVD viewings you’ve forced us through.” Hunk said, rolling his eyes.

“Excuse me, who was the one to suggest we watch it?”

“Uh, Keith.” Hunk pointed at Keith who jerked a bit from his perch on the edge of the futon thanks to the sudden attention. “He said we should watch your favorite movie since it was your birthday. Although I still don’t understand how it can be your favorite since it’s the same fucking movie as A New Hope.”

“Take that back!” gasped Lance, ready to fight. “The Force Awakens is a CLASSIC, Hunk. A CLASSIC!”

“Wasn’t it released, like, last year?” added Keith.

“NOBODY ASKED YOU, KEITH.”

\-------------------------------------------------------

After the movie ended for the second time that night, Pidge actually grabbed Lance’s ankle to keep him from continuing the torture by replaying the DVD for a third go.

“It’s my birthday, I get to decide what we do!” Lance whined over his shoulder, struggling towards the television. Allura was already fast asleep on Shiro’s lap, hugging his waist, and Shiro, the grandpa that he was, looked ready to pass out any second, his face half-buried in Allura’s hair. Hunk and Pidge were situated on the blankets cast out from Keith’s futon-bed and looked absolutely trashed from excessive amounts of alcohol and Star Wars.

“Lance, it’s like 3AM. Let us sleep. Please.” Hunk put his hands together in prayer. Lance himself felt exhausted but he was reluctant to give up on the movie-watching endeavor too soon. Drunk Keith was practically on top of him during it – hugging Lance during the thrilling parts, leaning his head on Lance’s shoulder every time the characters showed camaraderie – and he was very reticent to give that up.

“Yea, Lance,” Keith said, unwittingly interrupting Lance’s precarious decision-making. He had already slid down until he was laying on the carpet, head resting on the DVD box. “People need sleep to function.” Lance sighed. Drunk-ish Lance was way too willing to give in to Drunk Keith.

“Fine,” he muttered, stopping the DVD. “Where’s everyone sleeping?” Shiro and Allura were now both out, taking up the entirety of the futon, and Hunk and Pidge raised their eyebrows to signal they weren’t giving up their coveted blanket fort.

“I’m cool with the floor,” Keith said. “Soft.” As if to emphasize his point, he pet the ground next to his face. Lance wondered if he was the most sober one at his own 21st birthday party.

“Keith, you can’t sleep on the floor.”

“Don’t tell me what I can’t do, Lan- ow, fuck!” Keith tried sitting up to argue but hit his head on the side of the coffee table, eliciting snickers from the Hunk and Pidge peanut gallery.

“Okay, nope. You’re sleeping in a real bed.” Lance pulled a very pissy Keith up by his shoulders and encouraged him towards the bedroom.

“Hey, Lance,” called Pidge from behind him, causing him to swivel back. “Don’t let him sleep in his binder. And don’t molest him.”

“Who do you think I am?!”

“Lance Sanchez,” answered Hunk, not listening terribly closely as he nursed a bottle of water.

“Oh my god. Why is everyone so fucking drunk?”

After turning out the lights for his friends and escaping to his room, Lance found Keith sitting on his bed and staring out his window at the stars.

“You alright, Keith?” he called out tentatively, shutting the bedroom door behind him. “Pidge says you should take off your binder before you go to sleep.”

“Why are you being so nice to me?” Keith asked, back still facing Lance.

“Why am I- what?”

“Why are you letting me stay here? Why are you introducing me to your friends?” Keith slouched, appearing to look at his hands. Lance came over slowly and sat down next to him.

“Because you’re my friend, Keith. That’s what friends do. They help each other out and have fun.” Keith seemed to waver so Lance threw an arm over his shoulders to stabilize him. “Don’t tell me you’ve never had friends before?”

Keith rolled his eyes. “I’ve had friends, asshole. Just none that would ever do for me all the things you’ve done.” When he looked up to meet Lance’s gaze, his eyes were shining and he just looked too earnest and Lance had to snap his eye-line back to the window to avoid kissing him right then and there.

“Despite what some people might say,” tilting his head towards the living room, “I’m actually a very kind person.” He didn’t feel Keith’s attention shift and no response came. “Do you want to go to bed?”

“Yeah, probably,” Keith said through a yawn. “And Pidge is right, this binder needs to come off.” Lance took that as a sign to cover his eyes as clothing shuffled beside him, wondering if Keith would have said anything if he hadn’t averted his eyes. When he felt a plop next to him, he looked up to see Keith, wearing the same outfit but with the binder under his shirt gone, laying face-down on his bed.

“C’mon, Keith, you’ll get a crick in your neck if you sleep like that,” he laughed softly, laying down next to him to prop him up on his side. “Let alone if you vomit in the night. I’m not cleaning up any drowned bodies tomorrow morning.” Keith protested for a moment, then settled in a position that had them laying across from each other, arms tangled a bit and eyes at the same level. Lance tried to ignore how intimate it felt. 

After a few minutes with neither of them falling asleep, Keith whispered, “What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing, really,” Lance whispered back, although with the door shut no one in the living room could probably hear them. “I guess I’m a little bummed that you’re going to be leaving soon.”

“Leaving?”

“Getting a job, moving out. That kind of thing. I think we have a good thing going here, y’know?”

Keith smiled sadly. “Lance, I can’t live on your couch forever. No matter how much I want to.”

“Yea, but…you can stay here until you get another job at least, right?” Every interview Keith had up until now was for retail jobs in the area, but Keith was easily discouraged by the prospect of genial customer service and had yet to accept any of those offers.

“Well…” Keith trailed off. “Hunk told me that this girl he knows, Shay, is trans, and works at this gay bar in the area. It’s not too high stress…and I could really be myself there. It sounds really nice.” Damn it, Hunk. “He texted Shay and she said she’d talk to her boss about me starting there since they’re short-staffed.”

“That’s…great,” Lance said through clenched teeth. “I’m glad.”

“Lance…” Keith’s breath hit Lance’s neck slowly, seeping into his skin. “What are you thinking about?” he repeated, barely making any noise at all. Lance’s sleep-deprived, somewhat drunken mind directed his attention to Keith’s lips, still reflective from the gloss applied hours earlier. Fuck it.

“Doing this.” Lance leaned in, pulling Keith into his arms, and pressed their lips together. It was tender, not meant to overwhelm, but Lance could smell the wine stained on Keith’s lips and felt the lean hidden strength of Keith’s back muscles underneath his hands. 

When he pulled away after a few seconds, Keith was still frozen, staring at him. Then he moved in to return the kiss and missed slightly, catching the corner of Lance’s lips. “Shit…” he muttered against his cheek.

Lance laughed quietly and kissed Keith’s forehead. “Sorry, I guess you’re too drunk for this right now.” He moved to push Keith back to his original position but two gloved hands grabbed onto his arms, stopping him.

“Wait- can we…stay like this?” Keith asked quietly, staring intently at Lance’s shoulder to avoid his face.

Lance felt overtaken by a sudden wave of fondness and rubbed a thumb along Keith’s cheek where the starlight bounced off. “Sure. Anything you want.” He said it like a promise.

Keith’s eyelids fluttered closed as he pushed his face into Lance’s neck. “Goodnight, Lance.”

“Goodnight, Keith.” Lance buried his nose in Keith’s hair, and let the soft rise and fall of Keith’s chest against his lull him to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi again I am soliciting for comments because they really encourage me when working on new chapters ok byyyyye


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha so like sorry this is so late......I actually don't have an excuse for it this time. I've been rewriting this chapter over and over to get it right and then I got inspired to write a different klance fic and then i went back to rewriting this sooo....
> 
> anyway apparently my past chapters had formatting problems so none of the italics showed up but i'm not sure i want to go back and change it bc i think ppl will get a bunch of annoying notifications...let me know if that's not the case tho
> 
> anyway here u go

When the sunlight streamed in from the window, Lance was surprised to find himself waking up with a distinct lack of cute boys in his arms. Had Keith left? Maybe it was later in the day than he thought. Moving slightly, Lance realized there were two strong arms around his waist and a form stirred behind him. Lance cursed himself for being prone to moving around so much in his sleep.

“Keith?” he murmured, craning his neck to look behind him. All he saw was a mess of hair, slightly curled at the ends from spending a night in a ponytail. “Keith,” he said louder. “Are you awake?”

“Don’t talk so loud,” grumbled a low voice behind him. Lance smirked – he himself naturally didn’t get hangovers much, something he inherited from his _mamá_ ’ _s_ boozy side of the family. Instead, Lance usually got black outs from drinking heavily and people like Hunk had to sit him down and calmly walk him through all the stupid shit he did. Luckily (or maybe unluckily, he wasn’t sure yet), he remembered everything that happened last night – including kissing Keith’s now-chapped lips.

That thought suddenly struck concern in Lance. If Keith was drunk enough to have a really bad hangover, did he remember what happened?

“Keith!” he said suddenly, eliciting another perturbed growl and dropping it back to a whisper. “Sorry….” He tried worming around so that they were facing each other and accidentally ran his elbow back, hitting something soft.

“Ow, what the fuck, Lance?” Once Lance finally got himself fully turned around, he saw a pissed-off, half-asleep Keith clutching his chest. “You hit me in the tit.”

“Keith,” he started again, feeling a little bad, “do you remember?”

“I remember you hitting me in the tit.”

“Keith, stop being such a drama queen and answer my damn question!” he hissed, doing his best attempt at a whisper-scream and hoping no spit went flying.

“Look, Lance, you’re going to have to be more specific-“ Fed up with trying to communicate with Keith’s hungover ass, Lance pressed their mouths together again, slightly off-kilter due to Keith not expecting it. When he pulled away, Keith seemed undisturbed.

“That. Please tell me you remember _that_.” Lance realized his fingers were digging into the skin of Keith’s arms and scooted away to ensure he wouldn’t do anything else irrational.

“I remember it not smelling like your rank morning breath,” Keith commented, covering his nose and mouth in disgust. “But yes, I remember. You kissed me.”

Lance waited for some kind of reaction or further elaboration on Keith’s thoughts about the kiss, but none came. He seemed positively disinterested. “…And?”

“And what?”

“What was your opinion? On the kiss?”

“It was pretty nice? Do you want me to start singing your praises or something?” Lance groaned and turned to lay back on his bed and face the ceiling. Keith continued, likely sensing Lance’s obvious tension, “Trust me, I’m glad it happened. I’m just disappointed it took this long. Honestly I was ready for your mouth on day one.”

“You- you were what?” Lance squeaked in response, irritating Keith enough that he brought his fingers up to rub his temples. Keith’s wording of “ready for your mouth” made Lance picture things that weren’t particularly safe when their bodies were this close to each other.

“Lance, _please_ refrain from making your typical annoying sounds right now, okay?”

“Impossible – you’re into me?!”

“On multiple separate occasions I looked you dead in the eyes and said ‘I have sex with men’,” Keith sighed. “Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“That…you have sex with men?”

“Oh my god.” Keith grabbed a pillow and buried his face in it to make a low angry noise. Lance thought it was adorable. “My headache and surprise cramps are too painful to deal with you right now.”

Ah, so that was why their sleeping position had changed – Keith probably had to go do something with a tampon during the night. Lance tried to think back to what his _mamá_ would do for his sisters when they had bad period cramps. The usual combination was warm tea (which Lance did not have), sappy telenovelas (which Keith would neither enjoy nor understand), and a hot compress for abdomen - giving Lance an idea.

“What are you doing, Lance?” Keith asked, peeking out from behind the pillow as Lance shifted down to hug him around his waist. The shirt Keith had worn to bed had ridden up a bit, exposing the bottom of his toned stomach.

“My exes always said that I radiate heat,” Lance explained, nuzzling the area of skin he thought was coordinated with the uterus. “And my sisters used one of those heating pads to help their cramps while on their period.” Hearing a dry bark of laughter, Lance looked up to see Keith further pressing his face into the pillow.

“You’re too much,” came a muffled voice, grumbling despite overtones of gratitude. Lance turned his attention back to the skin under his cheek. Given that it was usually covered by bulky clothes, it was pale and did have the freckles from sun damage Keith’s face and arms had. His abs were defined and hard under Lance’s head, but there was still a layer of fat around his hips that Lance wanted to explore. After pressing his lips into the soft skin, Keith came out from behind the pillow to look down at him suspiciously.

Lance risked a question. “Do you ever feel dysphoric?”

“Uh, yea,” Keith answered, tone indicating that the response was obvious. “Binders are uncomfortable and can only help so much. Why?”

“I don’t know,” Lance sighed, hugging Keith’s waist closer. “It’s kind of a shitty feeling, isn’t it?”

“Are you trying to pity me, because I really don’t need-“

“No! No, that’s not what I meant!” Lance sat up a little to wave his arms around, the gesture hopefully obfuscating any of Keith’s hangover fury. “I just mean…I don’t know,” he averted his eyes. “Sometimes I get it. I don’t know what it feels like for you, for trans people, but- sometimes I look in the mirror and I want to look different too.”

Keith seemed intrigued. “Like a…woman?”

“Maybe? But I don’t feel that way all the time.” The anxiety Lance had pushed away to start this conversation started ebbing back in. He had never really talked with someone about this before, thinking his feelings were too transitory to be considered any kind of actual gender confusion. There was a pause as Keith appeared to be deep in thought.

“Is that why you were so interested in that lingerie set I gave you? And my femme clothes?”

“Partially?” Lance wasn’t sure if they were close enough for him to admit he thought about Keith in lacy underwear daily.

Keith suddenly sat up, forcing Lance to back up as well. “What if we went on a date-”

“YES,” Lance answered nearly immediately, cutting off the rest of his sentence.

“I’m not done, asshole,” Keith said, holding Lance’s lips closed with his hand and continued, “what if we went on a date and you dressed more femme? You wouldn’t have to worry about assholes because I’d fight anyone who gave you any weird looks or comments.”

Lance felt shellshocked for a moment, mind browsing through all the cute clothes Keith had shown him. “I-I don’t know if I could do something like that…” he murmured sheepishly.

“Why not? Have you ever tried?” Lance just grimaced and avoided eye contact. “You’re always selling yourself short, Lance. It’s fucking annoying sometimes. You have the biggest ego but the least confidence of a person I’ve ever seen.”

“Hey!” Lance knew it was true but it wasn’t like he wanted anyone to acknowledge it.

“I’m just calling it like I see it, Lance. Sorry not sorry.”

“So…” Lance swallowed. “Does that mean we’re…dating?”

“If you want to be. If we go on a date.” Keith smirked. “If you want to keep kissing me.” At that, Lance surged forward and took Keith up in his arms, kissing him playfully.

“How is it that you’re the least subtle at flirting but the cutest at it?”

Keith rolled his eyes. “I’m really not. I just know what I want. Which is this.” He returned the kiss, this time focused much better on his target than he was the night before, lips moving slow and lazy across Lance’s. Suddenly Lance felt his inexperience bared and compensated with enthusiasm, tilting them so Keith lay back on the bed and kissing his jaw wetly. Keith made a brief sound of discomfort as his head hit the pillow which was followed by some sweet sighs that Lance was desperate for more of. Lance moved down to suck hard on Keith’s neck, hoping to darken up the pretty pale skin that had been taunting him for the last three weeks.

After a few minutes, a deafeningly loud knock sounded on the bedroom door, jerking Keith’s fingers out of Lance’s hair and Lance sitting up his parents might walk in.

“Lance!” shouted Shiro’s deep voice. “I made pancakes for everyone!”

“Sweet!” Lance chimed, stumbling over Keith to make a rush to the door and open it.

“Glad to know your priorities are in order, Lance!” shouted a disgruntled Keith behind him.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Once everyone, except Allura, who was still passed out on the futon, got a plate full of pancakes, Lance noticed the eyes drawn to Keith, whose hair was a mess halo-ing his face and neck was patterned with a few light hickeys. As he eased onto the floor next to Hunk and Pidge while Shiro chatted up Keith, who seemed in awe of Shiro’s billowing muscles, he heard snickers from his observant friends.

“So, Keith’s just ‘staying here for a while’?” Hunk asked, nudging Lance with his shoulder and causing him to glower at the two of them.

“Are you sure he hasn’t just moved in with you?” Pidge added, this time sounding genuinely interested in something other than just fucking with Lance.

“I hope he has. I mean, I think we’re dating!” Lance announced proudly.

“You…think?” Hunk seemed unimpressed.

“Well I asked if we were dating and he didn’t really answer and just started kissing me, so I took it as a yes. But I think I’ll ask him on a date or something….soon…maybe.”

“Wow. Classic Lance confidence,” droned Pidge, finishing off a stack of pancakes Lance feared was larger than their actual stomach.

“You’ll want to make sure you get him on a good night, though,” Hunk butted in and tried his best to waggle his eyebrows. “ _Shay_ just texted me and said she talked to her boss last night and it sounds like Keith could totally start working there sometime this week. As long as he’s not, y’know, some kind of creeper.”

“Which, given that he hid in your car, ate my ice cream cake, and trespassed around my house for a few hours, seems unlikely, right?” Pidge added, grinning. Lance was about to jump to Keith’s aid when they waved their hand to calm him. “I’m just kidding. He seems cool despite all that shit. I mean, he’s put up with you, and judging by the amount of angry voicemails Hunk left me last year when you guys were roommates, that’s pretty tough.”

“Hunk!” Lance whined. “You said we were best buddies and got along just fine!”

“Lance, you were the one that said that.”

“What _is_ all this racket?” huffed a tired British voice from the futon. Allura rolled over and pushed her massive amounts of hair out of her face. “Is it the new year yet?”

“It’s October,” Pidge replied helpfully. “So, depends on what year you mean.”

Shiro, noticing his girlfriend stirring, seemed to instantly appear with a full plate of pancakes, taller even than Pidge’s was. “Hey, I made blueberry.” Lance looked away from their Cute Couple Moment™ and made eye contact with Keith instead, who was leaning on the counter in the kitchen with some kind of strange smile on his face.

“What?” Lance called over.

“Nothing!” Keith sang, putting his arms up and moving to the sink to wash some of the dishes.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Once everyone was fully awake and had taken a sufficient amount of pain relievers for lingering hangovers, Lance waved everyone out the door, secretly wishing he and his friends could all just live in a big house together. Maybe that would be possible after he graduated? If they all still lived in Albuquerque, that was.

The moment the door closed and Lance turned around, he was met with Keith, who slid his arms around his waist and surprised him with a kiss. When he pulled away, Lance let out a shocked gasp and said, “So this really _is_ happening.”

“Oh my god, Lance, stop being so surprised about this,” Keith said, dropping his forehead to Lance’s shoulder in defeat. “Has no one ever liked you before or something? I thought you had dated at least a little bit.”

Lance gulped, wishing he felt comfortable lying to the boy hanging from him. “Well, not really since high school. I don’t live on campus and I mainly hang out with Pidge, Hunk, and Shiro, so I don’t meet girls- or guys –that much. Plus, I’ve never dated someone like you before.”

Keith stood up straighter to look at Lance quizzically. “Someone like me?”

“Yea!” Lance replied earnestly. “Someone who’s fearless and willing to fight people that do bad things, and, and will jump in a strangers car without fear of who could be driving it! And also someone who puts up with my shit. And I have a lot of shit.” He said the last line as apologetically as he could.

Keith huffed out a laugh and pulled Lance closer, bringing their hips together and kissing him on the cheek. “I’m hardly brave. Remember I was running away from the minute wrath of my frail, aging parents.”

“I don’t care!” Lance protested, bringing his hands up to hold Keith’s face. “You’re brave to me. You’re…you’re lots of things I wish _I_ could be.” The small smile on Keith’s mouth made him nauseous from _feeling_ too much so he kissed it, trying to make it go away. “Just accept my fucking compliment, okay?”

“Fine, fine,” Keith acquiesced, then moved to grab some of the trash left around from the party the previous night. “Oh, also – I’m taking you on a date whenever I have a free night from this bar, assuming I get the job.”

Lance nodded as he cleaned up as well, then realized what Keith had said and felt his ears go red. “Wha- a date? To wh- Where would we- Huh?!” he sputtered.

Keith smirked back at him, obviously loving the effect his simple suggestion had. “Not telling where yet, but I got the advice from Shiro. He’s a cool dude.”

“Oh, _please_ , I saw you gazing longingly at Shiro’s biceps.”

“Like you haven’t ever done the same.”

“Irrelevant.” Lance was overjoyed that Keith liked his friends –it made his place in Lance’s life seem more permanent. The thought of Keith being around him and his friends, and possibly his family, made his heart squeeze oddly in his chest. He was pretty sure it wasn’t love. You don’t fall in love with someone in three weeks.

“Hey look!” Keith said, laughing beautifully from the living room. “Pidge put a post-it note on my X Files sticker telling me to get better taste in episodes. Your friends are ridiculous – unsurprising given that their yours.” He accompanied the comment with a teasing smile.

Nope. Definitely not love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why yes i have planned ahead at least one chapter, thank u for noticing (i hope y'all know I've just been winging this shit right??)
> 
> anyway I'm glad again that people like this and please comment to let me know what you think! i wish everyone low dysphoria and happy times


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another long chapter as apologies for lack of recent updates - my laptop super died so i had to wait until i could buy a new one so here i am.  
> also i think i'm going to go back and fix some pretty atrocious typos in previous chapters so if that floods people with notifications pls let me know and i will adjust!!!

If Lance were more organized (or organized at all), he thought he might make a pro-con list for the consequences of Keith’s new job at the nearby gay bar.

Pros: Keith can help pay rent; Keith feels less depressed; Keith wears cute gay outfits that Lance gets to ogle whenever he leaves for his shift.

Cons: Keith is almost never around when Lance is awake and not on campus.

Every weekday, they would only have a few hours to talk about their days/watch Netflix/make out after Lance got home from classes before Keith had to get ready for his shift. After only a few days of this routine, Lance considered e-mailing all his professors to see if he could switch into evening classes just so they could have more time together, but a quick look on the university website told him few (read: no) physics classes were ever taught past 1pm.

Lance spent his first Friday night alone in a while drinking beers and texting Keith, waiting for his boyfriend to go on break so he could respond. He found it really ironic that now that they were “dating” (despite the distinct lack of any dates so far), they saw each other far less than they did when Keith was just crashing on the couch and not sharing Lance’s bed. The only benefit of their thinning time spent together was a lack of physical ramping-up in their relationship – which Lance enjoyed because it gave him more time to pretend he knew what he was doing and search diagrams of Keith’s supposed anatomy. So far there was just kissing and light touches, since both were so exhausted from their respective classes/shifts to do much of anything else, Lance presumed.

Lance fully intended to _try_ staying up until Keith closed up around 4AM, but at 11 he was already so exhausted from staring at his phone screen while tipsy, that he settled for lying in bed with his desk lamp on so Keith might walk in and think he was awake. Sure enough, several hours of sleep later, Lance felt two gloved hands shake him awake. “Lance, wake up.”

“What are you talking about?...” he murmured. “I’m completely awake.” Lance moved his arm to wipe some lingering drool off his chin and recoiled when he got it on his bare skin instead. After a few forceful blinks, Keith’s tired face, prettied up with metallic paint to accentuate his features under dim bar lights, came into view.

“Sure.” Keith sat down on the bed next to him and Lance moved to lean his head on his shoulder, wanting contact but not having energy to actually hug him. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Hm?” Lance moved his face to nuzzle into Keith’s neck, eliciting a sharp intake of breath.

“Stop that and focus,” Keith huffed, calling upon his typical moodiness after another long shift at the bar, but unexpectedly not pushing Lance off him. “Remember when I told you I wanted to take you on a date when I got a day off?”

“Maybe?” Lance muttered, scooting his chin to the edge of Keith’s shoulder so he could see at least some angle of his face.

“Well I have a day off tomorrow. Er- today, I guess.”

Lance yawned, nodding. “That’s great, Keith. I’m glad you woke me up to tell me that.” He planted a wet, likely not-so-fresh, kiss on Keith’s cheek, which Keith promptly rubbed off. “Now wash your face off and come to bed with me.” Lance held him around the waist and fell backwards onto the bed to emphasize his point, forgetting his instruction for Keith to clean off his make-up.

“Lance, do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

“Mm.” It took all his effort to translate Keith’s noises into human speech.

“I’m free tomorrow. You’re free tomorrow. We can go on a date now.”

“That’s nice,” Lance mindlessly replied. A date, that’s pleasant. A date with Keith. Wait- “Wait.” Lance’s eyes opened wide. “We’re…going on a date tomorrow?”

“Yes, you dumbass,” Keith sounded like he was doing his best to sound annoyed but he accompanied the comment with a soft kiss to Lance’s jaw. “But don’t ask where, because it’s going to be a surprise.”

“This is the place Shiro suggested?”

“The very same. Also, we’re going to be taking my motorcycle.” Lance felt his heartbeat speed up. “ _And_ I’m going to help you doll yourself up whatever way you like.” Keith brushed his thumb over Lance’s lips, making him shiver.

“W-wow,” Lance replied, trying to hold onto some semblance of control. “You sure know how to treat a guy…”

Keith shrugged and shot Lance a rare smile that reached his eyes (even rarer after work). “This is my first date as the man in a relationship. Well,” he paused, considering, “ _a_ man in a relationship. Of course I’m going all out.”

Lance didn’t even attempt to hold back his own beaming smile. “Sounds like it’ll be nice.”

“Yep.” With that, Keith kissed Lance on the forehead and heaved himself off the bed. “I’m going to peel these space leggings off and shower. You go back to sleep, okay? We’ll go sometime in the afternoon.” He left for the bathroom and Lance found it difficult to shut his eyes and forget images of cute dates, Keith taking off his leggings, and his own future attempts at feminine beauty.

\-------------------------------------------------------

As per usual, Lance woke up many hours before Keith’s body was ready to recover from his previous night’s shift. This time, however, Lance didn’t have to rush out the door for any morning classes, so he spent one of his free hours staying in bed, looking at Keith as he slept. Honestly, it probably was a little creepy how intently he examined each of Keith’s thick eyelashes, the strong, but smooth, curve of his jaw, and his ridiculous mullet which he apparently intended to keep, given that he would maintain the haircut using scissors in the mirror…but Lance had caught Keith giving him his own fair share of creepy stares recently, so he figured they were good.

Eventually even Keith’s face got boring after enough staring, so Lance carefully crawled over him to shower and shovel cereal into his mouth. When the clock read 10AM, he was seriously tempted to wake Keith up to make him give him attention, but he figured one of the sacrifices that came with a relationship was letting your boyfriend get a healthy amount of sleep.

Luckily for Lance, after only 1.5 episodes on Netflix while cuddling next to Keith’s sleeping form on the bed, Keith began to stir and promptly exited the bedroom like a zombie on a mission. Some time later, he came back, facial expression now existent and coffee in hand (from one of the few kitchen machinery necessities Lance had), and sat next to Lance.

“You ready for the raddest fucking date you’ve ever been on?” he said, throwing his arm over Lance’s shoulder and sounding way too tired to be meaning his words.

“Have I been rubbing off on you or something? Since when do you say ‘rad’?” Keith blinked for a moment then furrowed his eyebrows.

“Shit. You _are_ rubbing off on me.” He leaned in close to whisper in Lance’s ear. “And not enough in the right ways.” The suggestive comment was punctuated by a slight nibble on Lance’s earlobe and making him nearly jump off the mattress.

“Wow! Nice!” Lance chimed, then realized his words didn’t make any sense and Keith was staring at him like he had three heads. “Uh- I mean, I’m glad that I have such a profound influence on you. As I do on many people.” With some effort, Lance slipped back into his cocky man-child persona as Keith rolled his eyes and set his cup aside to hold Lance’s hand.

“You’re nervous, aren’t you?” Keith asked, eye contact burrowing a hole through to Lance’s brain.

“I’m never nervous! Never! About anything!”

“Stop shouting.”

“S-sorry,” he replied, voice falling to a barely-audible whisper.

“Look, Lance, if you don’t want to go on a date, or if you don’t want to dress up, or if you only want to do a certain amount of these things, I’m cool with it.” A reassuring hand rubbed Lance’s shoulder blade and Lance squared his shoulders in resolution in response.

“No, I want to go! I want to dress cute and hold your hand and…well…” he blushed despite himself. “It is a little…nerve-wracking I guess. But I trust you.” He tried to smile and he was certain it ended up lopsided.

“I’m glad.” With that, Keith ruffled his hair (in the process unfortunately reminding Lance of a dad-like Shiro-figure) and stood up. “I’m going to grab something to eat and feed Red. You should take a look at my femme clothes and pick out something you like.”

“I’m on it!”

\-------------------------------------------------------

He was not on it. Lance wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but every time he picked out an outfit he thought was cute and held it up in front of the mirror, his anxiety overcame him and the prior confidence he experienced fell.

Many of the skirts and pants Keith owned were stretched to fit Keith’s own hips, which were considerably curvier than Lance’s. That left Lance only with dresses, many of which were too short for his long legs or fell off his flat chest. Looking in the mirror at his sad lack of cleavage, Lance got the idea to put on the lingerie set Keith had given him and spent the next five minutes struggling putting on the bra and stuffing it with tissue so it had any shape at all. Suddenly, after a bit more trying-on shenanigans, one of Keith’s black dresses fit him – and it only went down to his knees, which was preferable to some of the other scandalizingly short dresses he owned.

When Keith re-entered the room, Lance was pouring over his own boyish shoe collection, trying to remember whether he had ever seen girls wear converse with dresses before. He heard the footsteps pause after the door opened so he looked over his shoulder to find Keith standing stock-still and staring at his hunched form.

“What?” Lance was glad that Keith’s gaze didn’t feel uncomfortable while he was wearing the dress…until Keith continued staring without answer. “What, are you _entranced_ by my beauty?” Lance stood up to pose (semi-)provocatively, bending his knee and resting the back of his wrist on his forehead like a swooning damsel.

“Kind of, yea,” came a breathless response and making Lance’s skin feel like it was on fire. Why did Keith have to say what he was thinking so easily sometimes? There were other times he was reticent to give any information up at all.

“Keith, you can’t just…agree with me when I’m acting self-absorbed,” Lance huffed, deciding on the converse and pulling them on. Anything with more heel and he would feel awkward going from a few inches taller than Keith to half a foot. “The whole point of the gag is that everyone around me groans and gets annoyed because I’m not really hot shit.”

“No, yea, I understand the joke. It’s just fucking annoying so I like to cut it off at the root when I can.” Lance took the time to examine Keith’s outfit – skinny jeans (this time not black), a red flannel shirt rolled up to his forearms, a t-shirt (this time black), and his go-to combat boots. Lance was concerned the first time he saw Keith wearing them every day until he realized that he owned a few pairs of somewhat similar boots. He looked like some kind of emo lumberjack.

“You look like some kind of emo lumberjack,” Lance commented, filter gone to the wind. “You’re just missing an angsty beanie.”

“Shut up.”

“Am I wrong though?” Lance asked as Keith came over to look at him closely.

“Do you want me to do your make-up?” he proposed suddenly.

“I…” Lance could feel the neurons in his brain blip helplessly in confusion. “Do I want _what_?”

“Make-up. You’d look good in some eyeliner, I think. We could even go full goth and give you some black lipstick since that seems to be the theme of your outfit.” Keith gestured at the admittedly full-black outfit Lance had created, undergarments included. Normally Lance felt too muted in dark colors and trended towards primaries (especially blue), but seeing the black against tan on his skin in the mirror made him look oddly…sexy. Lance knew he looked cute, but there were very few occasions where he would actually admit he had some kind of sex appeal. He tried to imagine his eyes and lips framed in black and wondered if it was possible to get sexually frustrated from an image of yourself.

“Maybe not the lipstick, but I think some eye make-up would be cool,” he said, surprised at the amount of confidence now in his voice as he looked over at Keith, who returned a slight smile.

“Okay, stay right there, and I’ll grab my stuff.

After what felt like years of Keith poking and prodding and brushing soft things against Lance’s eyelids, the torture was finally done. “I better look fuckin’ pretty as shit,” grumbled Lance, whose intense fear of having his eyes poked out was severely tested by a fumbling Keith. As he turned to go look in the bathroom mirror, Keith stopped him.

“Wait! I’m not done!” He grabbed some small black item from his make-up bag and clipped it into Lance’s hair (rather precariously, given how short Lance’s hair was). When Lance finally went to see himself face-to-face in the mirror, he nearly didn’t recognize himself.

From the nose-down, he looked exactly the same. But contrasting with his squared, sharp jaw were two nearly fluffy, dark eyes that Lance would have fallen for if not for the fact that they were on his own face. The slight amount of bangs that hung an inch and a half above his eyebrows were somewhat pulled back on the side by a black barrette.

“Wow,” he hummed hollowly. Keith seemed just as entranced as he was from his perch behind him, looking at him through the mirror.

“I think I did a pretty good job, but only because I had a nice canvas,” he remarked, sliding his arms around Lance’s neck from behind and kissing his hair. Lance blushed at the compliment then immediately brought a hand up to lightly brush his cheek. He looked so…pretty. So soft and feminine. It felt nice.

“If you don’t have any other affairs to settle, I’d like to whisk you away on that date now,” Keith sounded behind him, doing his best to imitate some kind of romantic tone. He grabbed Lance’s hand and Lance followed nearly blindly, grabbing his phone and wallet but at a loss of where to put them. Unsure how to form words while Keith was holding his hand, he nudged Keith’s arm as they made their way to his apartment door and handed him the items.

“You really think I would buy a dress without pockets?” Keith scoffed, dead-pan, then moved the hand holding Lance’s to his hip to slip the phone and wallet into the pocket. Lance felt his skin prickle beneath the thin layer of the dress where his fingers touched. “Now let’s go.”

\-------------------------------------------------------

After a few minutes orienting themselves so that Lance A: wasn’t flashing anyone and B: didn’t have any dangling piece of fabric that could get caught in the motorcycle, Lance wrapped his arms around Keith’s hips and kept switching his focus from the wind blowing through Keith’s hair and the strong weight of his abs.

Keith still refused to tell Lance where they were going. He just kept insisting that both Shiro and he agreed that Lance would like it, and Lance was forced to go along with it. Around the twenty minute mark, Lance began to notice that they were driving around the same area of town and asked, trying to raise his voice above the noise, “Are you lost or something?”

Keith, facing the opposite direction, said something Lance couldn’t decipher. But his tone was calming, so Lance lowered his hackles and enjoyed the view of the city. Suddenly he felt the motorcycle slow down beneath him and he found himself parked outside of the local planetarium, which he had visited several times as a child for school field trips.

Lance had tried to get his whole group of friends to go to the planetarium multiple times since but there was never a good time during business hours that worked for all of them at once. Of course, it followed that Keith, who also liked space quite a lot (likely more than Lance did himself) would talk to Shiro about taking him here.

“Damn, Keith!” he breathed out, stepping off the motorcycle. “You really know a thing or two about wooing a dude.” Lance caught a rare view of Keith’s face looking surprised, but it was quickly veiled with a cocky smile.

“Of course I do. I’m the caring one in this relationship.”

“Excuse _you_ , I care like, a whole lot!” Lance huffed, balling his hands into fists. Keith got the drop on him instead by grabbing one of those fists and prying it apart to lace their fingers together.

“Got it. We’re going in now. Try to keep up.” Lance was curious for a moment what he meant given that they were literally joined at the hand and then Keith started nearly power-walking, yanking him along roughly.

“Hey!” Lance retaliated by also walking fast, using his longer legs to his advantage. By the time they reached the door of the building, they nearly raced sprinting into the doors, alarming some of the staff.

After Keith gallantly paid for their tickets, they roamed the halls, and Keith had to constantly stop Lance from touching all the interactive elements made for kids. Lance didn’t really care to keep his hands free of germs, but Keith, sharing that hand, seemed to have some beef with it. When they got to the history of astronomy exhibits, Lance leaned to look through an old telescope and Keith leaned with him, which would have been romantic if a subsequent bumping of heads didn’t cause a shoving match.

Coming upon a large (yet not _quite_ to scale) model of the sun, Lance gasped and pulled out his phone, only to hand it to a random passerby. “Could you please take a picture of us in front of the sun?”

“Lance what are you doing-“

“No problem…” the middle-aged woman paused as if she were trying to assess something about Lance, then continued with, “ma’am.” Lance blinked for a moment, shocked by the ma’am-ing (Is that even a word? He wasn’t sure.), then pulled Keith with him to pose in front of the sun, holding him close to his side.

“Smile, Keith!” he insisted when Keith only gave a half-grin that was so much less than the beaming smile he had on for the rest of their visit. They heard a click and the woman handed the phone back with a quick “you two are so cute” and Lance quickly scrolled to look at it.

Personally, he felt he looked a little ridiculous in his black-dress-and-converse outfit, given that it was so unlike something he would ever wear in public, but he was incredibly happy with how…right he and Keith looked next to each other. Keith leaned over his shoulder to look as well.

“What gives, Lance? Why did you want a picture so badly?”

“It’s like…a _metaphor_ , Keith.”

“A metaphor,” he echoed, lacking understanding.

“Because you’re like my sun- like a sun to me-“ No, wait, this sounded like he was saying son instead. “You’re…a sun. Warm, and bright, and life-giving, and full of fire, and just…magnificent.” Lance was really just word-vomiting but he mentally patted himself on the back for somehow finding his way into a decent compliment. It must have worked, too, because Keith hurriedly grabbed his hand and started walking so that he couldn’t see his face, which was he guessed was red from Lance’s view of his pinking ears.

“Stop being so fucking _cute_ ,” he muttered under his breath, still loud enough for Lance to catch it.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Later on, Keith led Lance to a long line of people in front of what looked like a door to an auditorium. “Keith…” he started, trying to quell his excitement in case his guess was wrong.

“What?” Keith asked, raising his mouth from Lance’s knuckles which he was busy running his lips over.

“Are we. In line. For one of those ceiling space things?!”

“If by ‘ceiling space thing’, you mean a projected show taking you through the cosmos,” he smiled, “yes.”

“Keith…” he said again, this time voice dropping low. “This is absolutely the best date I’ve ever been on.”

“I’m glad,” Keith said, voice sounding hesitant, as if he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the attention. Usually Lance tended to be such an attention hog that the balance was off of Keith, so when it focused back on him, he tended to shrink up a little. Lance filed that thought away for later retrieval.

When they opened the doors and the line filed in, Keith and Lance sat in the tilted chairs, hands still clenched tightly. They didn’t speak (Lance was feeling too much nervous anticipation for the show to start) and they seemed to share their own private energy amongst the din of families and weekend school trips talking around them. Lance realized that, since entering the building with Keith at his side, his concerns over his very feminine outfit contrasting with his societally-assigned-masculine body faded away.

The show started, and a peppy voice began to guide the group as the ceiling showed them whizzing past planets and stars. Lance was occasionally distracted by the occasional swipe of a thumb across the back of his hand or the squeezing of his fingers. Half-way through, once the show had completely zoomed out, showing the entirety of the known universe, the voice remarked on the beauty of it all and Lance felt lips press once again to his arm, this time to the inside of his wrist. When he looked over, he made eye contact with Keith who, instead of watching the ceiling, was staring straight at him. For the rest of the “journey” home to planet Earth, Lance felt it impossible to take his eyes away.

There was a harsh tension in Keith’s body in the way he sat – rigid, hand fast against his – but his face was soft and craving…something. The yearning expression in his eyes didn’t deflate until the lights came back on suddenly, shocking Keith, and everyone else in the room, into a wincing yelp. That was one way to eliminate sexual tension.

Still, Keith seemed quieter and more protective, putting his arm around Lance’s hip as they walked out, as if Lance accidentally running into a third-grader wasn’t worth the risk of keeping him only at arm’s length.

“D-did you like the show?” Lance asked, trying to get any kind of verbal feedback to work with. He wasn’t terribly great at reading body language from Keith.

“It was beautiful,” he murmured, looking at Lance again in a way that made him think he _wasn’t_ talking about the show. As if to cement this point, he added, “Do you want to head home?”

The question was laden with something thick beneath the surface. Lance wasn’t sure what Keith was thinking, but he whole-heartedly wanted to agree with whatever was happening.

“Yes,” he breathed, and Keith led him out of the building.

As they boarded the motor cycle, Keith sat down and pulled his keys out. In the sunlight, Lance could see him worrying at his lower lip with his teeth and grimacing a bit as he fumbled to start the motorcycle as quick as possible. Lance desperately wanted to kiss his concerns away, but he settled instead for taking a seat behind him and holding him around his waist, burying his face in his neck.

“Thanks so much for this, Keith,” he said, meaning every word and then some. In reply, Keith pressed his face into Lance’s for a moment, then started up the motorcycle for the drive home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yea so....fair warning rating might go up next chapter. we'll see
> 
> also please if you have a chance comment and let me know what you think! i read every single one and I even send them to my friends because they all make me so happy and help encourage me to keep writing! thank u friends hope y'all are having good holidays!!!!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really need to stop writing these chapters so late at night  
> Also I've kept good on my word and I've been going back to make some slight edits to old chapters - if that's blowing up people's notifications I can try and find a work around!  
> ALSO keeping good on my word, the rating of this fic is now M because there is some smut in this chapter, so, be warned I guess

Keith swerved into his claimed parking spot outside of Lance’s apartment so quickly, Lance was worried he might fall off despite his already tight grip around Keith’s waist. Wasting no time, Keith grabbed his keys in one hand and Lance’s arm in the other, pulling him in the direction of the entrance to the apartment building. The movement forced Lance’s dress to catch over the seat of the motorcycle, likely putting his ass on full display for anyone looking, but he was too filled with anticipation for whatever Keith had his mind set on to care.

The two nearly ran up the stairs, and while Lance was bent over panting from the exertion, Keith reached in his pocket for his keys and unlocked the door for them. “Got problems with endurance there, Lance?” he remarked, pulling Lance inside and shutting the door hard behind them.

“Ugh, shut u-“ Before Lance could get a response out, Keith was on him, pressing his lips earnestly to his own. Recalling the wetness of their first kiss when Keith was wearing lip gloss, Lance regretted his decision not to let Keith put any lipstick on him before their date.

Keith seemed to have some sort of plan (Lance was struggling just to match Keith’s intensity, let alone come up with any creative moves), so Lance encouraged him into an even more dominant role by leaning against the wall and pulling Keith in to cage him. Keith seemed to get the hint, because his hands grabbed roughly at Lance’s hips and the kiss became nearly all teeth and tongue, leaving Lance breathless. After a moment, Keith appeared to come to his senses and leaned back to look at Lance, then slowly licked his lower lip as he scanned his eyes up and down his body.

“W-what are you doing?” Lance stammered, hoping he didn’t look _too_ ravished already.

“Thinking.” Lance wasn’t expecting that answer, but okay.

“Since when do you think?” Lance sighed, doing his best to cover up his disappointment that Keith’s lips were nowhere near his body. “You’re one of the most reckless people I know, and you have me itching to shove you into the bedroom!”

Keith made direct eye contact, face now serious. “I just don’t want to mess this up.”

“You…” Lance shook his head and stifled rising full-blown laughter into just a few chuckles. “Keith… _babe_.” Keith frowned at the previously unused pet name – definitely a keeper. “There’s no way you could mess this up. You’re gorgeous, I’m gorgeous. You just whisked me away on a fantastic date and I’m literally submitting my body to you.” He emphasized the last phrase with an over-acted Transformers-babe pose, leaning his slight chest onto the closet door. “Stop _thinking_.”

Keith swayed a bit on his feet, obviously debating something in his mind (but of course, failing to share it with Lance), then he slipped an arm around Lance’s waist and started guiding him towards the bedroom. _Nice_.

Keith’s movements were delicate, making Lance want for the harsh, uncontrolled pushes he received when they first got in, but he had to admit it was pleasant being eased onto the bed and seeing Keith’s porcelain face move to hover over him.

“Can I touch you?” he asked, far too serious for Lance to be comfortable. If he was going to forget his own inexperience, he needed Keith to move a lot faster and less communicative.

“Yes. Yes to all your questions,” Lance said quickly, leaning up to capture a kiss then falling back on the pillow when Keith evaded him.

“Lance, I’m serious.”

“I am too. _Deadly_ serious.” Lance did his best attempt at a pout, but only elicited an eye-roll from Keith. “Oo! Should we have a safeword? Can it be something space-related?”

“We don’t really need a safeword because ‘stop’ is perfectly fine. Stop acting like an idiot.”

“Look, I’m trying to stop babbling but to be _quite_ honest with you, Keith, this is kind of new to me and all I know is secondhand sex stories from Hunk and stuff from porn so I’m not sure if we need a safeword or a signal or what so you’re just going to have to take the lead and help explain some of these things because I really don’t kno-“ Oh _god_ there were fingers in his mouth.

“Shut. The fuck. Up.”

Lance nodded slowly, enraptured by the stern expression and the firm, yet thin fingers now sliding out of his mouth to lightly brush over his lower lip.

“If you don’t like something, say ‘stop’, and if you can’t say that for whatever reason,” Lance wanted to know what kind of reason he had in mind, “just tap me or kick me or something. And try not to do much talking otherwise.”

Lance again nodded dumbly, and felt Keith’s now-gross hand slide from his mouth to the back of his head to grab his hair mildly. It felt…really nice. Then Keith pulled back on his hair to expose his neck to drop faint, ghosting kisses down his jugular and that felt even nice-er. He really wished he knew a sexier way to think about these things and communicate them, but his sexual vocabulary literally only consisted of porn-speak so he thought it best to just bite his lip to disguise any candid moans as _manly grunts_.

Next thing he knew, he felt Keith’s other hand on his leg, just below the hem of the dress, inching its way upwards and rubbing small circles. What was particularly surprising to Lance was how much more his dick reacted to the touches on his legs than the neck kisses.

“AH- Keith,” he gasped involuntarily as Keith shifted his hand to the inside of his thigh, still not that high above his knee. He felt a change at his neck and looked down to see Keith actually _smirking_. The bastard.

As Keith massaged his leg, Lance desperately wanted something to do with his own hands, but wasn’t too certain what Keith would like. Instead, he went with his instinctual desire to look at Keith with less clothes on, so he sat up suddenly, almost knocking heads with Keith, and hurriedly pushed Keith’s jacket off and tried pulling his black t-shirt off, only getting it caught on his armpits and the slight swell of his chest.

“Lance- what are you-“ Keith sputtered, interrupted in his own attempts, and pushed Lance’s arms away to pull the garment off himself. Seeing Keith remove his shirt while hovering over his lap was a sight Lance wanted to preserve in his memory until the day he died. Keith’s binder was shorter today, more like a sports bra in length, and it exposed his whole stomach, impressive abs and soft hips on display.

“Oh my GOD, Keith, you’re so fucking _beautiful_ ,” he said, words spilling out of his mouth so fast he only captured them himself second-hand. Lance immediately brought his hands to caress the pale skin, then tentatively shifted his hand upwards over the binder. “I-is this okay?”

Keith seemed mildly effected by the compliment, blushing slightly and averting his eyes when Lance moved his hand. “It’s fine. But fair warning, I can’t feel things that well over the binder.”

“Oh.” That made sense – it looked pretty tight so Keith’s nerves were probably really desensitized. “So…do you want me to…” He waved his hands around, in front of Keith’s chest, hoping he would get the message.

“Okay, I know I told you to shut up, but you’re going to have to have some form of intelligent communication.”

“Can I…take this off?” Lance asked, finally getting a sentence together. Keith paused and looked down, as if he hadn’t considered removing the binder to be an option. “I definitely don’t need to or anything, unless you’re, like, not _supposed_ to wear it.”

“It should be fine as long as I’m careful. But,” Keith seemed to gain some assertiveness and looked down at him again, “I would rather keep it on. It makes me feel…better.”

“Nice. Happy Keith means happy Lance,” he replied, trying as per usual to obfuscate the seriousness of the mood. “Now, weren’t you doing something earlier? Let’s continue that.”

“If by something, you mean touching your crazy-sensitive thighs, sure,” Keith said, grinning.

“I meant more like the makING OUT-“ Lance cut himself off as Keith held him up by his hips and leaned down to press sweet kisses to his inner thigh. The sight of Keith between his legs made his dick twitch and he suddenly agreed with Keith on the importance of silence, because Lance was sure he was about to start making some embarrassing noises any second. He covered his mouth with a fist and bit down to hide a whimper as Keith sucked hard just inches from the now uncomfortably tight lacy panties he was wearing.

“Your legs are amazing,” breathed a voice and Lance opened his eyes (which he didn’t realize he had closed) to see Keith nuzzling his face incredibly close to the area of Lance’s body that was now stealing all the blood from his brain. Lance always thought his legs were kind of awkward – too long, too skinny, covered in dark hair despite very little hair growing on his face and chest – but Keith kept going on, saying, “I’ve thought about these long legs wrapped around me for way too long.” Instinctively at the comment, Lance gasped and spread his legs even further, trying to invite Keith closer.

“K-Keith, c’mon,” Lance said, hearing his voice waver at an alarmingly high pitch, vocal control completely lost. He shot the hand not working on suppressing moans down to thread his fingers through Keith’s hair. Keith leaned into the touch in a near cat-like manner and kissed Lance’s thumb that brushed against his cheek. This soft gesture was quickly followed by his hand cupping Lance’s dick, shocking a groan out of him. “F-fuck, Keith…”

“Seeing you in a pretty black dress…” trilled Keith, “ _my_ black dress, all sensitive and twitchy…” His hand pressed harder and trailed around the lacy designs teasingly. “You’re even wearing the lingerie I gave you, like you were hoping this would happen.”

Lance couldn’t deny that maybe he _was_ hoping this would happen, but Keith saying it out loud left him feeling dreadfully embarrassed and turned on. He really should have expected Keith messing with him to be a kink of his, but this was the first opportunity Lance had ever had to explore such a concept.

Keith leaned in to Lance’s chest, brushing his lips at the V-neck dip in Lance’s dress where his overly-stuffed bra leveled out to a valley. “Such perfect tits, too. Tiny and so cute,” Keith nearly whispered, slipping one of the sleeves off Lance’s shoulder to kiss along the edge of the bra. Lance felt his hips lose control as he bucked into Keith’s hand and made small, feathery gasps with each slight change in movement from Keith.

When Keith simultaneously bit softly at his nipple while harshly rubbing a thumb over his lace-covered slit, Lance groaned without thinking, “ _Fuck_ me.”

“What was that?” Keith mouthed against his chest, barely pausing his ministrations.

“I said fuck me, Keith! _God_ ,” he winced – trying to speak and not jump Keith immediately was nigh-impossible. “Just fuck me.”

“I can’t.”

The tone of Keith’s voice brought Lance a bit out of his stupor. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t fuck you.” He sounded…frustrated? But definitely not in a good way.

“What- What do you mean?” Lance sat up to press a comforting kiss to Keith’s mouth, but a hand pressed to his chest stopped him.

“I don’t have a dick, Lance. I can’t fuck you.”

Lance blinked, finally realizing what the problem was. Just a matter of stupid linguistics? “Okay, fine, whatever, let me fuck you, or you ride me, or whatever. Let’s just…sex! Now!” The prior sexiness of the situation was slowly dying from Keith’s grumpy literalism but Lance refused to give up. Keith, however, suddenly stood up from the bed. “H-hey! What gives?”

“I want to stop,” Keith said, voice quiet, as he moved to the opposite side of the room where Lance’s window looked out over the dusky street.

“What?! Why the hell do you want to stop?” Somewhere in the back of Lance’s mind, a voice reminded him that if Keith wanted to stop, he should accept it and be supportive and not react the way he was currently reacting. Unfortunately, that same part of his mind was nearly overrun with a strong desire to _keep touching Keith_. Keith at least owed him an explanation, right? Maybe?

“I just need to stop, okay?” Keith replied, his tone now loud and stern, full of fury. Lance took a step out of bed towards him and Keith immediately shrunk back. “Don’t come over here.”

“Did I do something wrong?” Lance was starting to get real fucking annoyed with Keith’s secrecy routines at this point.

“Of course not, Lance,” Keith scoffed, shaking his head. “Not every little thing is about you, okay? Let’s just…drop this. This was nice, but I just need some time, okay? Chill your dick.”

If Lance had considered his options, he would have seen that “chilling his dick” _was_ the appropriate move to make, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “What, are you _afraid_ of having sex with me? Don’t think you can _handle_ it?” Immediately after he said it, he regretted ever allowing himself to have such a haughty personality in the first place because Keith seemed to roar in response and picked up the first thing he saw (Lance’s desk lamp) and flung it – FAST – into the wall next to Lance.

“OF COURSE I’m fucking afraid, Lance!” Lance did his best not to flinch but he had very rarely seen Keith so angry before, and never so much at him. “Don’t you _think_ I want to fuck my boyfriend? Shit, look at you! Of course I do!” For a moment, Lance considered whether this outburst might just be another sex thing meant to embarrass him, but then Keith continued. “But I can’t fuck my boyfriend, Lance. Do you know how that feels?!”

Lance opened his mouth to respond that no, he didn’t know, but in his opinion, Keith wasn’t in that predicament either, when Keith cut him off again. “I just want to be a normal _guy_ , but I can’t go a single day without being slapped in the face with reminders that I’m not!” The anger-fueled statement was punctuated with a kick to Lance’s desk chair, knocking it over to skid a few feet along the floor.

When Pidge got upset over gender issues, Lance always took that as his signal to let people with better tact and knowledge about such things (Hunk, Allura, basically anyone but him) comfort them and Lance jumped in at the end for a joke that would bring the mood back up and help Pidge smile. This time, however, Keith was not a crying teenager needing a hug from friends. He was a force of nature, face contorted in anger with tear tracts now beginning to show. Jokes probably weren’t going to work. Lance felt fucking useless.

“What am I even trying to hide?!” Keith now seemed to be talking to no one, his breakdown able to continue without a receptive audience. To Lance’s surprise, Keith slid his arms out of his binder with some difficulty and tried prying it off, but his breathing became so chaotic that it seemed to be difficult. “Get this _fucking thing off of me_ ,” he growled, and Lance leapt quite literally at the prospect of doing anything that could be helpful.

“Ssssshhh, Keith, calm down,” Lance tried whispering, grabbing Keith’s arms to keep him from wrestling with the binder. “Lift your arms up.”

“Stop it! Let me go!”

“Keith, I’m just trying to help so put your goddamn arms up so you stop hyperventilating.”

Keith grimaced then obeyed, weakening his fight against Lance and raising his arms up, chest still heaving and fresh tears dropping on Lance’s hands. Lance kept his gaze up as he peeled the binder off and threw it into the laundry pile. Keith crossed his arms over his chest and avoided eye contact.

“Are you breathing alright now?” Lance asked quietly, worried a single wrong move could set Keith’s intense anger off again.

“Yes,” Keith answered curtly, voice shaky as his strained breaths turned into dry sobs. “I-I’m so s-sorry, Lance…” he huffed.

“Sorry for what, Keith?” The urge to hug him was nearly overpowering but Lance balled his fists to ignore it.

“I took you on this fantastic date and then I ruined it. I don’t even know how to be a _person_ , Lance. I just keep fucking up and you’re like, the only person who doesn’t deserve to deal with me, the most fucked-up person on Earth. You’ve done so much for me and I’ve done what?” Keith laughed dryly. “Cry and throw things because I can’t fuck you?”

“Well, I don’t blame you for wanting to fuck me.” The words came out before Lance realized they had, but Keith actually smiled for the briefest of moments. “Can I hug you?”

“…Sure,” Keith said, dropping his arms and leaning forward. Keith’s breasts against Lance’s own chest was a weird sensation, one Lance would rather enjoy if not for the circumstances.

“Can I say something?” Lance asked tentatively.

“I must be really fucked up if you’re actually _asking_ _permission_ to speak,” Keith remarked, leaning his face on Lance’s shoulder.

“I just want you to know,” Lance swallowed to give himself a few extra seconds to find the right words. “I think you’re super buff and manly and you can climb stairs without dying and you do things without letting things like _thinking_ stop you, Keith. You’re the reason I own cups, the reason I felt comfortable wearing make-up outside today, and the reason I know how to feed a lizard crickets without vomiting literally everywhere. You are the best boyfriend in the world. Utterly fantastic. And that was with just ONE date. You don’t need a flat chest to be amazing, and you don’t need a dick for me to love you.”

The last confession wasn’t exactly planned, but Lance figured that was what made it so true. Probably. Either way, Keith’s grip on his arms tightened and he heard a soft, “Thank you, Lance.”

After a few minutes of holding Keith close and waiting for his breathing to fully calm down, Lance offered, “How about I make some spaghetti and we have a romantic dinner?”

Keith pulled back to look at Lance in the eye. “Do you…actually know how to make spaghetti?”

“Mostly!”

Keith laughed softly and nodded. “Only if you keep the make-up on.”

“You got it.” Lance hugged Keith close to his chest once more and enjoyed the feeling of Keith’s laugh against him. He knew he had a lot to learn about what Keith was going through, and a jovial attitude could only get them so far without some kind of real communication behind it. But in the meantime, Lance was alright just holding on to Keith and vowing to figure out the rest with him later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this chapter was as cathartic for y'all as it was for me. Again, please leave a comment if you have any thoughts you'd like to share/if you enjoyed this chapter!!!


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